Taagi – which takes its title from the Apache word for “three” - is his first trio recording with bassist Aaron Gonzalez and drummer Stefan Gonzalez.
Recorded on successive nights during May 2009 performances in Dallas and Austin, this album represents a great collaboration between jazz veteran and great piano maestro Curtis Clark and young, but very talented Gonzalez brothers - Aaron and Stefan. Piano trio at it’s best.
This record has been made possible by generous support of UAB "Garsu pasaulis".
NoBusiness Records NBCD 11, 2010, edition of 1000 cd’s
To define the personage of pianist Curtis Clark as “underappreciated” is putting it a bit mild! Perhaps his indebtedness to Horace Tapscott has taught him to keep his own artistic virtues well-hidden. But that’s a sin, for a musician who appears on records like David Murray’s Murray's Steps or on Home Safely, in trio with Ernst Glerum and Han Bennink, which is still one of the more unforgettable and intense works for piano trio of the last twenty years [if you don’t know this work, you should do everything you can to find it].
It is therefore with pleasure and curiosity that we receive Taagi, with Clark again in a cooperative trio setting - this time with the two contrasting musicians Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez, on bass and drums, respectively, both sons of the well- known trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez. The record opens with two suites, "Joy/Blessings" and "Water Colors/New York City Wildlife," in which Clark alternates solo beginnings with collective interplay in a convincing way. In his solo explorations, the pianist explores various ambiences, easily putting together the blues with harmonic complexity. But even on the rest of the record, which closes with a new reading of the standard " Beautiful Love, " there breathes an air of authentic dynamic quality, of inventiveness and balance between the different movements, without having to choose between the character of the music or the musicians, whether in the phrasing or in the total construction of the pieces. We are not sure that this record from the Lithuanian No Business Records [a pressing limited to 1000 copies] will succeed in removing from oblivion the career of pianist Curtis Clark, but this is certainly another milepost along the length of a measured career.
