Goldings-Bernstein-Stewart Release 13th Album

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of DL Media)

This Friday Smoke Sessions Records will release the thirteenth album of the trio whose members are organist Larry Goldings, guitarist Peter Bernstein, and drummer Bill Stewart. The label is named after the Smoke Jazz & Supper Club in New York, where the trio first started playing regular Thursday night gigs in 1989. The title of the album is Perpetual Pendulum, and Amazon.com is currently processing pre-orders.

The album title is also the title of the ninth of the eleven tracks. It was inspired by the laws of physics, according to which perpetual motion is impossible, due to the inevitable disorder imposed by entropy. In their press release, the trio sets itself up as a counterexample:

The trio has been creating vigorously swinging music together for more than 30 years and show no signs of slowing down. That’s not quite an eternity – though in jazz terms, it might as well be.

Contrast that with with wisdom of Maurice Chevalier, who sang the following in the film Gigi:

Forevermore is shorter than before.

Note that the title of the song he sang can also be viewed as a reflection on entropy: “I’m glad I’m not young anymore.”

Whatever the trio members might think about age, they are clearly still going strong after more than 30 years of the same weekly gig. Furthermore, their spirits could not be higher. Rather than reflecting on making it through the pandemic, they preferred to compose a new tune with a title that is provocatively impolite to Joe Biden’s predecessor in the White House!

More interesting is the set of sources behind those tracks not composed by any of the trio members. These include John Lewis (“Django”), Wayne Shorter (“United”), John Lewis (“Django”), Duke Ellington (“Reflections in D”), and Harold Arlen (“Come Rain or Come Shine”). In addition, there is Golding’s “Let’s Get Lots,” a warped take on Jimmy McHugh’s “Let’s Get Lost,” best known for its own warped interpretation by Chet Baker, and, similarly, Golding’s soulful twist on the second of George Gershwin’s three piano preludes.

Taken as a whole, the tracks on this album consistently remind the attentive listener that a cool disposition is far more productive than the more insipid “spiritual” responses to pandemic condition with little more than insipid navel-contemplation.