Jeff Rupert (tenor); Richard Drexler (piano).(Review by Lance).
What a gem! Why did I procrastinate? Superb tenor, piano playing on a par.
Recorded live at Timucua Arts White House in Orlando, Fl back in June 2015 the music just flows. Tenor and piano gel supporting and feeding off each other. It's no surprise that, presumably when he was very young, both Mel Tormé and Maynard Ferguson laid high praise on Jeff Rupert and praise from those two doesn't come much higher. Drexler played piano with the Woody Herman Band for 20 years as well as playing bass in the trios of Kenny Drew Jr., and Dick Hyman - not a bad CV (he's also a faculty member of the University of Central Florida's acclaimed jazz studies program, along with Rupert).
Tonally, Jeff Rupert is Getzian rather than Coltranic but, hey, there's room for both whilst Drexler is that kind of pianist, a man for all seasons, a bit like the late Hank Jones. Give him the gig, he'll do it and probably better than anyone else in contention.
With the exception of Rupert's composition My Mistress' Eyes (based on a Shakespearian sonnet) the music is based around a choice selection of gas book/jazz book material which, in these days of "you've gotta play originals" is, at least in the UK, practically a hanging offence!
Without a Song (Vincent Youmans); I Can't Help It (Stevie Wonder); Snowfall (Claude Thornhill); Strange Meadowlark (Dave Brubeck); Imagination (Jimmy Van Heusen); A Felicidade (Jobim); My Mistress' Eyes (Jeff Rupert); Soul Eyes (Mal Waldron).
I'm going to be playing this on the car stereo - BSH's equivalent of a Grammy nomination.
Lance.
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