Benny Green

Benny Green – Solo (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 40:48 minutes | 354 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sunnyside

Drawing inspiration from his piano heroes, Benny Green displays his immense taste and soulful restraint on his second solo piano album, 2023’s aptly titled Solo. One of the most virtuosic and technically adept players of his generation, Green emerged to acclaim in the ’80s playing a blend of athletic bebop and swinging stride piano that underscored his deep grasp of the work of players like Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, and Bud Powell. He put these influences on display on 2001’s Green’s Blues, his first album of solo piano. Though his technical skill has never waned, Green has matured in other, more nuanced ways as a player. His style has inched ever more toward a measured, deeply soulful place. His is an understated aesthetic that prizes melody and serving the song over a showy, note-heavy approach. It’s that low-key, yet still impressive style he brings to Solo, an album that finds him paying tribute to the pianists who have inspired him. Early in his career, Green garnered attention as one of the last pianists in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Here, he invokes this legacy with his bluesy, gospel-infused take on “The Soulful Mr. Timmons,” pianist and ’80s Messenger James Williams’ homage to one of the original Messenger pianists Bobby Timmons. It’s a wry yet heartfelt start to the album and one which sets the tone for Green’s warm celebration of the piano lineage, of which he is a part. Throughout, he often evokes the style of the specific pianist he’s interpreting, from the hard bop block chords of Timmons on “This Here” to the walking left-hand bassline on Tommy Flanagan’s “Minor Mishap.” Elsewhere, Green offers warm, harmonically resonant takes on songs written by the pianists themselves, including Cedar Walton’s “The Maestro,” Horace Silver’s “Lonely Woman,” and Barry Harris’ “Rouge.” These are tasty, superbly attenuated performances by Green, whose respect for each player is evident in each note. – Matt Collar

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Benny Green – Happiness! Live at Kuumbwa (Live Version) (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 36:43 minutes | 433 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sunnyside

The brilliant pianist Benny Green has made it his purpose to pass on the essence and tools of the masters of jazz. He was fortunate enough to grow up at a time when a young musician could still approach and apprentice with a legend like drummer Art Blakey, as Green did as a member of the Jazz Messengers. Green continues to honor both the musicians and the sound of the music that he grew up admiring on his new album, Happiness!
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Benny Green – Benny’s Crib (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:49 minutes | 695 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sunnyside

Benny Green’s notes on his upcoming album, Benny’s Crib: My primary instrument will always be the piano, but as a child of the 1970s, I grew up in an era in which the sound of an electric piano was more prevalent in the popular music of the day than was the acoustic instrument. The sound of the Fender Rhodes and the Wurlitzer were heard regularly on the radio and records played at parties while I a kid.

I’ve long wanted to integrate the Rhodes into my musical palette as a bandleader and my 2018 Sunnyside release, Then and Now, my twentieth record as a leader, was the first time that I recorded with the instrument on an album of my own. I greatly enjoyed the kind of sonic liberation I found in freely combining and blending the Rhodes with the acoustic piano for a few tracks.

I love the warm, dark saturated overtones of the Rhodes. It is a beautiful sound and, like an acoustic piano, the way its overtones spill into one-another gives the instrument a truly orchestral quality. Although the Rhodes has bell-like characteristics in some ways similar to a vibraharp, it allows a lusciously orchestral dimensional expanse and substantiality.

I planned Benny’s Crib to be a continuation of the ensemble cast I’d presented on Then and Now, which is my working trio augmented by three guest performers, flautist Anne Drummond, vocalist Veronica Swift and percussionist Josh Jones for a few of the selections, as a further extensions of my basic instrumental palette of piano, bass and drums. With Anne’s flutes and Veronica’s voice, I like to “stack” or “layer” a virtual “few” of them to make chords and counterpoint, sometimes doubling the clusters I play on the piano with my right hand.
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