Revolutions

Jim Beard is the prototype for the modern, twenty-first century musician: He is a composer and arranger adept in classical, jazz, R&B, rock, soul, film music, and fusion idioms; a keyboardist whose fleet fingers combine the best of Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock; as evidenced by his astonishing three-decade career as a sideman with every body from Wayne Shorter and Walter Becker, to Me'Shell Ndegeocello, Brecker Brothers, Pat Metheny and Eliane Elias, and as a leader in his own right.

But like most geniuses, Beard's gifts have been hiding in plain sight. Thankfully his quasi-anonymity comes to an end with the release of his stupendous Sunnyside debut Revolutions: a boundary-crossing ten-track masterpiece featuring his friend, the evocative composer/conductor/arranger Vince Mendoza, and award-winning Metropole Orchestra from the Netherlands; one of the world's last radio broadcast ensembles.

It was Mendoza's 2003 collaboration with Beard and Cologne's WDR Big Band on their 2007 Grammy award-winning track "Some Skunk Funk" with the Brecker Brothers that lit the fire for this project, recorded in two sessions in 2005 and 2007, with previously released and new material from Beard, recorded by the legendary engineer Andrew Dudman from Abbey Road Studios. "[It] was a fantastic experience for me and the orchestra seemed to truly enjoy playing the music," Beard writes in the CD liner notes. "I was recording live in the same room as the orchestra, so the pressure was on to play well! No fixing or overdubbing! It reminded me of some of the film score sessions I do in New York where I record in the same room as a 90-piece orchestra. If you screw up, you and 89 other people have to do it again."

The fruits of these sensational sessions are self-evident, complete with outstanding soloists: guitarist Jon Herrington, Argentine percussionist Marcio Doctor, saxophonists Bob Malach and Bill Evans. "Holiday For Pete & Gladys" is the lead-off track, a midtempo, ivory-tickled swinger tha grooves in a Burt Bacharach/Steely Dan/Muscle Shoals mode, contrasted by the martial drum strokes of "Crossing Troll Bridge," the Weather Report-ish "Hope" and the quiet stormed "Diana." "Lost at the Carnival" and "Princess" are equally pulsed by South American samba and Nuyorican salsa. The Strauss-like bounce on "Holodeck Waltz" is no Star Trek illusion, and "In All of Her Finery," also evokes the aura of a neo-classical Aaron Copeland gem. "Parsley Trees" prances with a marimba-motored, Asian-tinged backbeat, while "Trip" is a no-nonsense 4/4 jazz swinger. On all of the tracks Beard's elegant and engaging pianism is economical, as it is engaging, with no a note wasted.