Queen’s Move from Copenhagen to Paramus

I first encountered drummer Alvin Queen when I wrote about his Night Train to Copenhagen album in April of 2022. For that album he led a trio with the Swedish pianist Calle Brickman and the Danish bassist Tobias Dall. The performances were straightforward, and the improvisations were imaginative. Most important was that Queen allowed plenty of improvisatory leeway for his two partners.

Drummer Alvin Queen on the cover of his new Feeling Good album (from the album’s Amazon.com Web page)

A few months ago, Queen released a new trio album entitled Feeling Good. This time he was joined by Americans: Danton Boiler on bass and pianist Carlton Holmes, who shifted over to synthesizer for one of the tracks (“Love will Find a Way”) and gave a solo account of the “Love Theme” from the music that Alex North and Terry Callier composed for the film Spartacus. The sessions were recorded at Tedesco Studio in Paramus, New Jersey, between September 26 and 28 of last year.

As was the case on the Copenhagen album, most of the tracks are familiar standards. Nevertheless, I have to confess to more than a little annoyance for the utter paucity of background information I was able to harvest. The Amazon Web page (hyperlinked above) gives only the titles for each of the thirteen tracks. It was only through a Google search that I found a Jazz Views article by Jack Kenny that provided a minimal amount of useful background.

I have to wonder whether or not the skills for engaging production may have been a casualty of the pandemic. It used to be that promotion was the “bread and butter” that sustained the release of a new album. Now it sometimes seems as if uploading tracks is all that matters, assuming that the Internet will take care of everything else. Such laziness is an affront to the musicians that put all of their disciplined efforts into creating the tracks for the album in the first place. I have long been skeptical about the mantra that “the Internet changes everything.” I now realize that “everything” includes a skilled capacity for promotion following the release of a new album!