Danish pianist-composer Jeppe Zeeberg sophomore album continues to expand his impressive musical vision that his debut one, «It’s The Most Basic Thing You Can Do On A Boat» (Barefoot Records, 2014) Began. Zeeberg employs the same double rhythm section – double bass players Casper Nyvang Rask and Adam Pultz Melbye and drummers Håkon Berre and Rune Lohse, but this time he adds miscellaneous keyboard instruments to his piano. Again, the compositions attempt to reconcile between elements from distant, almost alien genres within the jazz legacy, as swing, even the boogie-woogie, and free jazz or the ornamented baroque piano playing with dense and complex free improvisations. Such irreverent, post-modern approach is always at risk of being reduced to an intellectual exercise, but Zeeberg imaginative reconstruction of elements, narratives and musical grammar is performed with clever sense of humor, true passion and playful command.
The inclusive spirit of Zeeberg’s composition tends to elude the listener. It sound as if he and his band enjoy the schizophrenic, chaotic game of jumping between a playful, repetitive rhythm, almost a dancing one, and an abstract, loose form of almost industrial pulse, and then try to meld these conflictual styles. Zeeberg usually plays the tempting melody, sometimes stressed even in a cheerful tone, as on «Die Wahrheit» and «Christmas In Brown And Grey», while the other musicians keep challenging and experimenting with the melodic envelope. On the title piece (Part I) Zeeberg is the one who assembles the fractured, competitive rhythmic ideas into a coherent, playful theme, still with lots of surprising stops and melodic detours.
Zeeberg abandons this iconoclastic approach only on the solo piano «Still Life Without Flowers», for a contemplative free improvisation, slowly reaching freer and freer terrains.
Provocative yet convincing musical vision. Beautifully played.
Eyal Hareuveni
Jeppe Zeeberg: (p, spinet, org, synrh), Casper Nyvang Rask (b), Adam Pultz Melbye (b), Håkon Berre (dr, perc), Rune Lohse (dr, perc)
