Album Reviews

Suave, swinging and exuberant, Michael Weiss’s self-produced Soul Journey sounds something like a big band playing on a Blue Note Records date, but it’s really a small ensemble making like a big one thanks to Weiss’s deft, harmonically-rich, rhythmically neck-snapping arrangements and free-spirited yet tightly drawn, well-meshed performances by the three man veteran horn section of saxophonist Steve Wilson, trumpet and flugelhorn player Ryan Kisor and trombonist Steve Davis.

The rhythm section of Weiss on piano and Fender Rhodes, Joe Farnsworth on drums, Paul Gill on bass and percussionist Daniel Sadownick, jet-propel the slamming set of high-energy Weiss originals that, don’t worry, leave plenty of room for improvisation within the tight construction.

Recorded back in 2000 by legendary, now semi-retired engineer Joe Ferla at famed Avatar Studios and mixed to ½” analog tape, the album was originally issued on CD-only in 2003. The tape then sat carefully stored until very recently when Bernie Grundman used it to master this double 33 1/3 set pressed at QRP with plating by Gary Salstrom, packaged in Stoughton-printed jackets.

So, you have “A team” players performing a set of muscular, definitely “non-cerebral” forward-looking, mind and body engaging tunes superbly recorded, mixed and mastered by an engineer/mixer and mastering engineer “A team” as well. What could go wrong? Nothing.

Twenty years in the can has not dated this outing. If anything, it’s welcome relief from some of today’s “above the neck” mathematical exercises.

Soul Journey is a never facile always tasteful set that will engage both jazz sophisticates and “newbies” and the sound, not “audiophile” in the “group playing in a room”, sense, but rather where there’s unrestricted dynamic slam, along with generous harmonic and textural presentation should please all ears.

The biggest problem with this release, available only through Weiss’s website is that it’s limited to 500 copies, 250 of which are numbered (Mr. Weiss is not adverse to pressing more if the demand is there). Special order reel-to-reel sets are available, transferred by Bernie Grundman Mastering from the original tapes onto a set of two 10.5” 2500’ reels at 15 IPS.

With Mr. Weiss’s permission here’s the opening track “Optimism”

Optimism