CD reviews: Charmaine Ford: Busy Silence – 65

Charmaine Ford: Busy Silence

From: Ford Motion/Ode/NZ
Style: Jazz
Music: 3/5
Sound: 4/5

Young Kiwi pianist Charmaine Ford has won competitions, studied overseas and played loads of jazz festivals. Her playing is undeniably impressive. The problem for me is that she comes from a very conservative stream of jazz, one that embodies a template of jazz endeavour that’s going on 60 years old, rather than taking on the original, inventive spirit of jazz. Busy Silence is primarily an album of original compositions played (in an acoustic trio settings) in a classic jazz style. That is, one marooned in the bars and nightclubs of the ’40s and ’50s, before Miles Davis and John Coltrane came along and shook up the scene. It’s absolutely fine as background dinner music, but rather unchallenging. Still, there are compensations to be had. One is the quality of the recording. Ford’s fleet fingers and dynamic pianistic expression are captured cunningly on her Steinway Model D by recordist Neil Maddever, and the NZSM Concert Hall proves a great venue to capture the ringing clarity of the instrument. Also noted is Live At Sandwiches (Ford Motion) which matches Ford with bassist Nick Tipping and drummer Richard Wise in a live setting.

Gary Steel