denny Schools Periods & Styles book

Recorded at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts, December 18, 2010 "Snowball" Composed by Al McLean Al McLean - Saxophone Kevin Dean - Trumpet Mike Rud - Guitar This fun original by Al McLean features the saxophonist on a rare C soprano saxophone dating to 1916. Trumpeter Kevin Dean and Al McLean are beautifully balanced on the session. Dean, a founding faculty member of the Schulich School of Music's Jazz program at McGill University, is known for his 'straight-down-the-barrel' Hard Bop aesthetic, and a refined, traditional delivery. Nuance and chops are deftly packaged into a compact and purposeful oeuvre; Bebop at its highest level. We hear echos of Lee Morgan and Clifford Brown when Kevin plays, but he remains vibrant and relevant, setting himself apart, and painting a unique musical picture with his palette of traditional colors. McLean, on the other hand, is harder to both define, and to contain, with an ever-overflowing exuberance of style and technique. Al McLean wears a contemporary 'coat of many colors' as he easily adapts to different instruments and styles with an earnest joie-de- vivre. This is not mere sampling or referencing, which is what we have come to expect from young artists, rather, a primordial summoning of the spirit - of the rare Leblanc Rationale in his hands, of Dexter Gordon, Cannonball Adderly... Al McLean is able to sleekly conform to the style at hand, not loosing his voice, but drawing on different parts of it. This intrinsic understanding ...