Billy Mohler - Focus (2021)

Strange quartet what gives Focus to the press. We find Shane Endsley and Nate Wood of Kneebody, Chris Speed ​​of Human Feel and Claudia Quintet and ... Billy Mohler of The Calling, just the pop band of "Wherever You Will Go" hit at the top of the charts all over the world (between including the Italian one) in the now distant 2002.

Because Mohler, after graduating from Berklee College of Music and experience at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, becomes a producer and songwriter for real legends of pop, rock, R&B and country music, as well as composer for important advertising campaigns.

But since the first love is never forgotten, Mohler calls together some prominent exponents of the increasingly active Los Angeles and New York scene and fires an album of original compositions, certainly with a strong melodic appeal, but fully inserted in a context of jazz improvisation.

The result is of considerable interest, eight pieces, for a total of not even forty minutes, which have a life of their own but united by a continuous game of songwriting and invention, respect for form and interpretative freedom, communicative immediacy and articulated trajectories.

The leader shows off a walking bass, warm and mellow that acts as an indefatigable propeller to the forays of the winds, assisted by Wood's imaginative drumming. Endsley and Speed ​​light up the scene, without excess, with the talent of someone who knows how to put the right note in the right place. Amazing album.