Yesterday morning I became aware, for the first time, of the five-volume Best of Tobin Mueller releases. Some readers may recall that my first contact with Mueller took place in October of 2020 when I listened to his What Survives album based on a project to bring the narrative of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the stage, which struck me as an impressive undertaking worthy of attention. The Best of series, on the other hand, prioritizes music that is not influenced by narrative. The titles of the five volumes are as follows:
As can be seen from the associated hyperlinks, all of these albums are available from Amazon.com only as MP3 files.
Unfortunately, the album I encountered yesterday was the third volume in the set, which, I have to confess, is my least favorite of the genres that have been classified as jazz. It consists of 22 tracks grouped into two parts. The first part consists of fourteen tracks, most of which are vocals in the progressive genre. The remaining eight tracks are classified as “prog-jazz-fusion instrumentals.” For the most part the good news resides in that second category, and Mueller’s keyboard work emerges as the primary focus of attention. The vocals, on the other hand, never really register with me as jazz and do little more than reinforce why I tend to steer away from the progressive.
Whether or not my listener experiences will lead me to any of the other volumes remains to be seen.
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