• John Fordham
  JazzUK
  July 2006
  


• Steve Baxter
  Jazzviews
  June 2006
  


• Kenny Mathieson
  Jazzwise
  May 2006
  


• John Fordham
  The Guardian
  May 2006
  


• Peter Bevan
  Northern Echo
  April 2006
  


• Chris Parker
  vortexjazz
  March 2006
  


• Paul Medley
  Oxford Times
  March 2006
  


• Ian Mann
  24dash.com
  April 2006
  


• Alan Joyce
  Nottingham Evening Post
  February 2006

John Fordham, JazzUK, July 2006

New acoustic-piano trios aren’t exactly rarities these days, but this debut for Gilad Atzmon’s regular pianist Frank Harrison - though it has some links to the open-ended approach of Brad Mehldau - certainly justifies lengthening the list. Harrison’s group features bassist Aidan O'Donnell and drummer Stephen Keogh, two restrained and sensitive experts who burnish Harrison’s reflective music at every turn. There are three standards and five originals, and a meditative visit to the ‘Spartacus’ theme is a delectable dialogue between Harrison and the sonorous O'Donnell. The ballad ‘Jinni’ has a slowly-surging Bill Evans feel, but the music is mostly thoughtful, apart from a headlong, and very inventive, account of ‘What Is This Thing Called Love?’.

Steve Baxter, Jazzviews.com, June 2006

Some time ago (obviously), Ronnie Scott apparently described Frank Harrison as "one of the most talented young musicians I have heard". Although (equally obviously), any praise from me doesn't carry quite the same weight, I've been a fan of Frank's playing for several years, ever since I first saw him with Gilad Atzmon's Orient House Ensemble. He's a key member of that band, and it's in that context that I've nearly always seen and heard him. Whether he's clowning around with Gilad, tentatively searching for just the right delicate chords to accompany a solo, or hammering the piano's innards to produce ominous sounds of impending war, what's most impressive is his concentration and above all his melodic and rhythmic invention. I have to admit that I don't always know what he's doing, but it always seems to make sense after the event. Now here he is with his own very classy trio and debut album, and it's a pleasure to be able to say nice things about it.

It's one of those albums that makes you sit up from the very first sequence of notes, in this case a low, ascending three notes ending in a chord that immediately establishes a mood of quiet melancholy for You Can't Go Home Again, and indeed for most of the album. Of the various aspects of Frank's piano style, the one most on show here is his more meditative side. What Is This Thing Called Love? begins in similar fashion, but soon develops a momentum as the bass and drums settle in, a subtly propulsive swing. This, plus the sure melodic sense and thoughtful chord placing, inevitably recalls (who else?) Bill Evans. But then, towards the end of the track, the more rhapsodic flights began to remind me of another, perhaps equally obvious, heavyweight comparison: this level of unforced virtuosity from all three and the almost playful approach surely sounds rather like Keith Jarrett's ñstandards trioî.

After the opening pair of standards, we get a sequence of Harrison originals, starting with Afternoon in Tronso. It's more abstract and whimsical in structure and mood, again recalling Jarrett, as does the following the title track, backed by free-form bass and drums. Jinni, in contrast, sounds like a ready-made instant standard.

Next up are two more non-originals. The ubiquitous Nature Boy is done solo and slow, with subtly chosen chords and harmonies (Evans again), while a more idiosyncratic choice is the Love theme from Spartacus, delivered with a beautiful simplicity. The album closes with two more Harrison originals that continue the contemplative mood. In fact, my only slight criticism would be that maybe there could have been a couple of more up-tempo tunes mixed in there somewhere. On the other hand, maybe that would have broken the spell. As it stands, this album is perfect for creating and sustaining a gently melancholic, but still somehow rather uplifting, atmosphere. Whenever that's the kind of mood you're in (or want to be in), this is the one to put on. Back to top

Kenny Mathieson, Jazzwise, May 2006

Reading the press quotes that arrived with this disc made Frank Harrison sound like a cross between cited Art Tatum and a heavy metal guitarist ("cranium-shattering levels of intensity"). Whatever he was doing on those nights, the music on this impressive debut album reveals a very different picture of a player that we are likely to hear a lot more of in time to come.

His lucid, intelligent, spacious and beautifully controlled explorations are backed up by sensitive support from his fine Scottish-Irish rhythm section. Harrison's own compositions lead towards an evocative expressionism, as in 'Afternoon in Tromso', the haunting 'First Light', and 'Falling'. There are two more of his own pieces, 'Jinni' and 'Maria's Planet Song', alongside fresh and thoughtful interpretations of Cole Porter's 'What Is This Thing Called Love', Eden Ahbez's 'Nature Boy', performed as a solo piece that drifts nicely into 'Love Theme From Spartacus', and the less familiar opening track, Don Sebesky's delicate 'You Can't Go Home Again'. Back to top

John Fordham, The Guardian, May 2006

Harrison is most familiar as Gilad Atzmon's pianist, and the 2006 Atzmon group's diversion toward keyboard electronics might suggest a hint of that on Harrison's personal debut. But this is an acoustic-trio set in Brad Mehldau territory, and the scalding pace and motivic zigzagging of What Is This Thing Called Love? is a reminder both of how much spark remains in this familiar jazz-ensemble format, and how many good examples of it there are in the UK.

Harrison is accompanied by the bassist they call Scotland's Dave Holland - Aidan O'Donnell - and by that sensitive small-group drummer Stephen Keogh. The pianist's quiet, rippling originals take five tracks; there are three standards, and a brooding account of the Spartacus theme with O'Donnell in conversational support. Harrison's swaying ballad Jinni is the most openly songlike of his own pieces (Bill Evans-like in its accelerating development), but - as with Mehldau - the most elliptical, preoccupied overtures develop unexpected fireworks. Back to top

Peter Bevan, Northern Echo, April 2006

Pianist Frank Harrison will be familiar from Gilad Atzmon's groups but this debut album presents him in a new light. He's accompanied by bass player Aidan O'Donnell and drummer Stephen Keogh but it's Harrison who stands out on a session which is as delicate and expressive as anything else I've heard, helped by a crystal clear recording. It's simply beautiful. Back to top

Chris Parker, vortexjazz, March 2006

Given the atmospheric Graham Murrell light-study photographs adorning its sleeve, and the understated delicacy of its music, First Light might almost be mistaken for an ECM release; the five Harrison compositions, too, gently insistent, utilising the slowest of tempos to produce gracefully haunting piano-trio music, may remind some listeners of Paul Motian's rubato pieces for that label. This said, however, the album is clearly a highly personal project, its non-original material (Don Sebesky's luxuriously stately 'You Can't Go Home Again', Cole Porter's perennially intriguing standard 'What is This Thing Called Love', Alex North's tender 'Love Theme from Spartacus' and Eden Ahbez's 'Nature Boy', performed solo) intelligently selected to showcase not only Harrison's luminous yet muscular approach, but also the interactive spontaneity of a surefooted rhythm section: bassist Aidan O'Donnell and drummer Stephen Keogh. Poise, elegance and dynamic control are the trio's watchwords, but there is power in evidence as well, Keogh's drumming in particular crackling with tastefully suppressed energy; overall, though, this is very much Harrison's album, pleasingly homogeneous in mood and approach, and demonstrating just why he is regarded as a rising star in the jazz world. Back to top

Paul Medley - Oxford Times, March 2006

Oxford-born jazz pianist Frank Harrison made his mark with Gilad Atzmon's Orient House Ensemble, which won the prestigious BBC Jazz Award in 2003. First Light (Basho Records, SRCD 15-2) is his first album with his own trio, yet it has the feeling of a second or third. So often a jazz player's first recording will come across as a technical tour de force as if more fame comes from more notes played at greater speed. Harrison, with remarkable maturity, has skipped this phase and made an album that reveals the depth of his musicianship without forcing it on the listener.

In fact, rather the opposite. This album makes one think of Eric Satie playing jazz. It is full of space verging on silence, sudden unexpected harmonies and a feel of wide open space into which notes and phrases have been inserted with perfect accuracy. In the second track, Cole Porter's What Is This Thing Called Love, Harrison gives us the tune by building from fragments that appear through a mesh to stately chords and embellishments, so that the well-known phrases appear and fade and appear again. Then, with the least fuss, the rhythm section of Aidan O'Donnell (bass) and Stephen Keogh (drums) has picked up the beat and Harrison is away with wonderful flowing phrases. The title track, First Light, by Harrison, brings back the resonance with Satie as he plays extended phrases with the slightest of backing from bass and drums that is elegant to the point of quiescence yet builds to a climax where he attacks the strings of the piano directly to further the mood of the ethereal. There are no fast, driving tracks here, but plenty of playing where Harrison and the trio show how effortlessly they can move from slow ballad to upbeat swing. O'Donnell and Keogh work admirably with Harrison's sparseness and he in turn gives them space to embellish the rhythm.

This is a subtle, enigmatic album that demonstrates to what extent Frank Harrison has lived up to the expectations of his teachers in Oxford, not so many years ago, as a truly gifted musician. Back to top

Ian Mann, 24dash.com, April 2006

Oxford based pianist Frank Harrison (born 1978) is best known for his work with the fiery and charismatic Israeli saxophonist Gilad Atzmon. In effect he has been Atzmon's musical "right hand man" for the last five years and has appeared on four of his albums.

However on this, his first album as leader Harrison reveals the more reflective side of his musical personality.

He is joined by the young Scottish bassist Aidan O'Donnell who is fast earning a big reputation for himself after working with fellow Scots saxophonist Tommy Smith and trumpeter Colin Steele. O'Donnell has also worked with Alan Skidmore (saxophone) and with visiting American saxophonist David Binney among others.

Completing an all Celtic rhythm section is Irish drummer Stephen Keogh who has been on the scene a while longer and who has played with a wide variety of artists including such legendary figures as Johnny Griffin and Lee Konitz. He can be a very powerful drummer in the appropriate context but his playing here is full of musicality and restraint.

The band is very much in the ethos of the modern piano trio with each of the players having an equal input into the group sound. There is great interaction between the players. You can almost hear the musicians thinking.

The material consists of five Harrison originals and four standards. Everything is played at medium or ballad tempo. Harrison deconstructs Cole Porter's "What Is This Thing Called Love" in the manner of a more restrained Brad Mehldau. "Nature Boy" is treated as a short and tender solo piano interlude.

On the original material there is something of the feel of an ECM session in the style of say, Bobo Stenson. Tracks such as "Afternoon In Tromso" and the title track "First Light" are very much in this vein as is the album's opener Don Sebesky's "You Can't Go Home Again". This impression is formed partly because the album is immaculately recorded.

Credit should be given to Stefano Amerio who engineered the session in Udine, Italy where the music was recorded and to Andrew Tulloch who mixed and mastered the album in London. The album was produced by Harrison and Keogh and there is a spacious quality to the production, which seems to make every note hang in the air in a manner reminiscent of Manfred Eicher's work with ECM.

Harrison is superb throughout the recording. His playing is always delicate but is also exploratory and probing. He plays sparingly, is never hurried and makes effective use of the spaces between the notes. O'Donnell supports him brilliantly. He is rock solid as an accompanist and dextrous and fluent in his solos. Keogh's drumming is apposite throughout. He is the epitome of good taste and reveals a whole new side to his playing.

This is an excellent debut from Harrison and as critics have pointed out an incredibly mature statement from such a young musician. The album compares well with John Taylor's immaculate "Angel Of The Presence" album which was released earlier this year. To be bracketed with the masterful Taylor is praise indeed and in Frank Harrison it would seem that the future of British jazz piano playing is in good hands. Back to top

Alan Joyce, Nottingham Evening Post, February 2006

On past visits, pianist Frank Harrison could usually be found in the ranks of Gilad Atzmon's Orient House Ensemble, but here he was with his own trio, accompanied by bassist Aidan O'Donnell and drummer Stephen Keogh.

Their delicate approach was apparent from the start; they excelled in fragile, tender ballads, mostly originals with the occasional standard. Harrison's style highlighted his melodic perceptiveness which was not only intense but distinctly personal and rested confidently on a remarkable technique. Sometimes he would be more adventerous, as on evergreens Taking A Chance On Love and How Deep Is The Ocean; the faster tempos suited his unhurried, precise improvisations. Aidan O'Donnell seized attention by his vital role in the improvised group textures and his impressive solo work. He too displayed exquisite sensibility and remarkable technique.

Skilled percussionist Keogh followed it all with shimmering top cymbals, chattering snare and whispering brushes and seized on the up-tempo standards to provide a prodigious swing. Back to top