Kenny Werner: Lawn Chair Society

CML call number: CD JAZZ Werner
Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times: "Occasionally you hear jazz performed that’s so detailed, chiseled and compressed with energy that it’s hard to imagine the musicians doing it twice a night, six nights in a row. Such is the case with the pianist Kenny Werner’s quintet at Dizzy’s Club this week. Mr. Werner’s career has been all over the place for 25 years: a long-running trio that never quite rose above the hedges, long-standing gigs with the harmonica player Toots Thielemans and the singer Betty Buckley. He is a radical melodic improviser and a strong, logical organizer of rhythm and harmony. He processes a lot, all the time, and often produces music that’s pleasant and easy on the outside, but rippling with incident: shifts in meter, tempo and tonality. His quintet at Dizzy’s includes Chris Potter on tenor saxophone, Nicholas Payton on trumpet, Hans Glawischnig on bass and Brian Blade on drums. The gig is a consequence of Mr. Werner’s very good new album, 'Lawn Chair Society.' … It isn’t a working band. … Yet it was crazy how much it behaved like one, in the old-fashioned sense of steady comportment … across consecutive solos. …"