Spike Wilner Trio - Odalisque (2017)

The music of Spike Wilner is never just about idealised, Romantic beauty, although this figures in much of his intricate melodicism. It is about examining the emotions that go with it. Listening to “Hopscotch” provides (perhaps) another clue, which takes us to Rayuela (Hopscotch), a novel by the Argentinean Julio Cortázar. Like the breathtaking often maddening narrative in which the reader is encouraged to “write the course of the story”, in Mr Wilner’s song of the same name we are invited to allow the rhythms – pummeled by the magical melody – to knock about in the inside of our respective heads; challenged to determine the song’s outcome only to have Mr Wilner overturn it all with bassist Tyler Mitchell and drummer Anthony Pinciotti in tow.

Make a second pass through the album after listening to these songs first and now you’ll probably have the kind of perspective that you are really meant to have on the music of Spike Wilner – of its’ tenderness as in “Little Girl Blue”, its racy elegance as in “Sweet Georgia Brown”, its mesmeric harmonic and rhythmic choices as on “You” and “A Stitch In Time Save Five” and its unabashedly Roman airs as in “You’re My Everything” or the sardonicism of “It’s the Talk Of The Town”… a frightening Jaki Byard-like genius for telling Jazz history as he plays will also emerge. Be not afraid, however; it’s just all a day’s work in the extraordinary pianistic life of Spike Wilner.

Personnel – Spike Wilner: piano; Tyler Mitchell: contrabass; Anthony Pinciotti: drums