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Art Attack is a new CD recording by jazz pianist and composer, Dan Freedman, and was released
December 18, 2008 on the Four Hearts Music label. It contains 10 songs, of which two are Dan
Freedman originals, and the remaining 8 are favorite jazz standards. The songs include a variety of solo piano, piano duo, piano/bass duo, and piano/bass/drum trio settings. The album is available from
CDBaby ( www.cdbaby.com
), and will shortly be available at all the usual online outlets (Amazon, iTunes, etc.). It is also available on Dan's web site ( www.dan88.com
).
Dan Freedman plays the piano parts (overdubbed in the case of the piano duo recordings), and also the bass parts. Brazillian drummer Giba Moojen plays drums in the trio.
Dan Freedman produced and engineered the album at his Four Hearts Studios recording studio in
Honolulu, HI in November and December 2008.
Remember that feeling you got when you first heard Oscar Peterson or Bill Evans play? Dan Freedman cites those two as his strongest jazz piano influences, and has devoted the better part of his career to bringing that same feeling back to audiences again and again.
Focusing on creating a strong connection between audience and performer, Dan's approach always offers something fresh and unusual to talk about afterwards. That's important, because what you'll remember after hearing Dan play is that the best jazz is in continuous evolution, drawing in from your existing favorites, yet adding something that wasn't ever there before. Fortunately, Dan manages to do this without losing the melody like so many people to nowadays.
That balance, between the familiar and the new, can be heard very clearly on Dan's latest CD release,
"Art Attack".
Dan Freedman has played piano, organ, guitar, and clarinet all his life, but always as an avocation rather than a main career focus. Born in London, England, Dan grew up with parents who performed broadway shows in community theatre, and subconsciously learned all the jazz standards from those shows through osmosis! Dan played many of those songs on his weekly “Dan The Piano Man” spot on
BBC Radio Brighton each Saturday at age 11. Dan's family moved to Canada in 1980, where he became a jazz piano performance major at college. After graduation, Dan completed bachelors and masters degrees in computer science, and went on to have a 20 year career as a software entrepreneur specializing in network security. Dan was musically “born again” after attending a Hiromi Uehara

piano concert in early 2008, and re-committed himself to music the following day! His debut album,
Art Attack
, is the first product of this new “second act” for Dan, and two more albums are planned for
2009. Dan has become a frequent guest artist and band leader in his home town of Honolulu, Hawaii, and can be heard in 2009 both there and on tour at jazz festivals in the US and Asia. Dan is 43, married with two children who both play piano and drums. Dan endorses Bosendorfer pianos, and Roland and
Clavia keyboards.
Art Attack is a strong debut album of creative yet familiar work by a talented jazz pianist and composer.
While making for an interesting listen, the album also shows plenty of directions in which the music can grow in the future, as is so often the case with debut albums. The album is mostly solo piano, but the duo and trio pieces absolutely fly , and it would be nice to hear more jazz combo work in future recordings. The jazz/pop crossover pieces (Michelle and Laughing Child) and the thematic piece (Lives
At Stake) act as a valuable counterpoint to the jazz standards, which themselves firmly anchor the album to the jazz mainstream.
On Green Dolphin Street [5:02] This Kaper and Washington composition is an all time favorite jazz standard of many listeners, played here in a jazz trio format of piano/bass/drums. The song is performed in a modern, energetic fashion, making use of lots of space and time stretching. Particularly notable is that all three musicians are in the forefront of this musical conversation, rather than having the bass/drums in their more traditional supporting role. Here, all three are in the foreground, contributing musically without stepping on each other and muddying the conversation. This demonstrates a fine degree of control, allowing each to say something, while not drowning out the other. From an open beginning, the song gradually builds in intensity through piano, bass, and drum solos, before being brought back under control for the finish. The treatment here shows influences going back to Bill Evans, Miles Davis, and Chick Corea, but also draws in the work of more recent pianists such as Brad Mehldau and Austin Peralta.
Very Early [7:00] Dan performs this Bill Evans composition on solo piano, using the piece to convey the emotion of an early sunrise on a new day, where the opportunity is unlimited, but the challenges are great. This song displays Dan's harmonic talents, in which he takes an already-beautiful song, and re-harmonizes it without losing its original essence. Each time through the song, he adds an emotion-building interlude at the end, which rolls through several keys and ends with a line of descending minor third chords that ultimately resolve back into the original melody and harmony of the song. This treatment is reminiscent of the harmonic work of Chick Corea or Keith Jarrett, and in particular recalls the recent piano duet recording entitled Duet by Chick Corea and Hiromi Uehara, in which the same song was featured (but with different harmonies).
Solar [5:00] Another solo piano piece, but this time using melodic counterpoint as the energizing vehicle, rather than re-harmonization. This piece, composed by Miles Davis, does still open with a stunning descending harmonic introduction, but then the focus is squarely on the improvised melody line that Dan overlays on the song's original harmonies.
Sweet Georgia Brown [6:00] Dan plays two pianos (overdubbed) in a highly stylized interpretation of this very well known jazz standard by Maceo Pinkard (and made even more famous as the Harlem Globetrotters theme song). Jazz piano duets are still a relative rarity, in part because pianists like to fill in all the blank spaces in music, which would become overpowering in a duet context. But here, Dan has exercised the required restraint, while still showing off a versatility and virtuosity in both

hands that is also unusual. Here, all three musical elements of melody, harmony, and rhythm, are provided by the four hands on the pianos, in a lively jaunt through this well loved song. One interesting thing about this recording is the presence of ascending and descending lines of harmonic dissonance that resolve at the end of each phrase.
Wheatland [5:50] This is a piano/bass rendition of the Oscar Peterson composition. It is a difficult song to play, for the same reasons that the Eric Satie Gymnopedie classical piano pieces are also difficult – all the music is in gentle, subtle melodies that are easily overpowered by heavy hands. Here though, Dan gives the song a gentle treatment, drawing out the melody and enhancing it with a left hand counterpoint that simultaneously supports it and stands on its own as a musical element. The song's main form is played solo on the piano, with bass coming in for the improvised solo sections. It's interesting to hear this song performed without drums, which is unusual, and which provides more space for the harmony of the song to exert its influence on the overall outcome.
Chopsticks [3:22] Clearly, Dan had a lot of fun with this amusing solo piece. Everybody knows chopsticks (composed by Euphemia Allen), the song that begins and ends with just two fingers on the keyboard. But not here – Dan re-harmonizes the song completely, introducing his now-familiar ascending and descending chords underneath a melodic improvisation that starts fast and furious, and then builds from there! Here, it's Dan's right hand virtuosity that comes through, keeping the listener on the edge of her seat for much of the song, artfully resolving from near-chaos back into order at the end.
Time Remembered [4:23] Coming out of Chopsticks, this solo piano rendition of a Bill Evans original song is a complete change of mood. Like Very Early , the song is emotionally focused, using
Dan's harmonic and melodic interpretation skills as a tool to paint a picture. That picture shows a man or woman who has just lost something, and who is reflecting on what was, what is, and what may yet be. The reflection back to the past is evident at the start of the song, but by the time the interpretive piano solo section begins, the focus of the song is not on what was lost, but on what it was before it was lost – still in the past, but now reflective on the positive aspects of the memory. As the song progresses, it is easy for the listener to imagine herself in a similar situation, going through some life change, feeling the loss, yet drawing on the highlights of what once was in order to summon the strength to continue forward. This is perhaps the most emotional piece on the album, and the artistic depth put into the piece by Freedman's playing is most evident here.
Michelle [4:52] What is a Beatles tune doing on a jazz album? In this case, it's doing quite well indeed. Dan performs this very popular Lennon and McCartney song on solo piano, re-harmonizing the song yet keeping it entirely familiar. As with the other selections on the album, this song builds . Also, as with Wheatland , this track is more about the dynamics of the performance than it is about any blistering solos or wild harmonic gyrations. The original song was a ballad set atop an oom-pah rhythm. Here, Dan releases it from that rhythmic underpinning, and interprets it more as a classical piece. The result is a flowing build-up of energy from chorus to chorus, culminating in an acoustic release of tension at the end.
Laughing Child [3:57] This is a solo piano performance of one of Dan's original songs, performed in a style that crosses over from the jazz into the pop worlds. Its inclusion here is slightly strange, although Michelle , which precedes it on the album, is also a pop crossover. However, the song demonstrates Dan's ability to compose accessible music to which a singer could add his or her talents.
Still, no singer is evident here, so we are left to consider it as a pop ballad instrumental. As such, it is a pleasant song to listen to, but breaks no new ground.
Lives At Stake [3:42] This bonus track is a riot, going well outside the bounds of jazz (are there any boundaries to jazz?), and entering the realm of electronica and thematic music. The song is a Dan
Freedman original, played on a highly processed Marimba – so processed that its origins are barely

perceptible. The song is mostly rhythmic, with no harmonies at all per se, and a melody that simply supports the rhythm of the song. Yet, because it is played on a Marimba – a pitched instrument – rather than drums (which are largely without pitch control), the rhythm of the piece is given a new dimension.
The piece is very hard to describe because it is so unusual, drawing on such diverse sources as Tubular
Bells my Mike Oldfield, some of Sting's world music compositions, and some of the atonal works of
Philip Glass.
Jazz means different things to different people. To Dan, jazz is a creative, performance-oriented endeavor, centered around creating tension between known songs and unknown (ie: creative) improvisations. A typical jazz work centers the listener's ear on a well-known song (or, just as often, a well-known harmonic progression and song form such as a 12 bar blues, even if the melody itself is new). It then introduces improvisational “surprises” for the listener, which are contrasted with the original tune or form. As the song is being heard, the listener is continually stimulated by the relationship between the improvisations and the original song/form. As long as that relationship allows the listener to recognize what is being done, the result is usually a pleasurable experience. Sometimes, players forget to maintain that relationship, and depart completely from the original. Listeners often interpret this as the player “losing the melody” or “losing the song”, and most don't like the result.
There are those, however, who embrace a more freer version of jazz that allows a complete departure from the original song or form, delighting in whatever harmonic/rhythmic/melodic creations the artists can bring forward and present on its own merits. But the more familiar form of jazz is the one discussed earlier, that relates new improvisations directly to well known underlying themes.
To the rock or pop listener, jazz can often seem disconnected, especially if they are unfamiliar with the underlying material. In that sense, jazz is often seen as elitist, requiring a deep knowledge prior to being able to appreciate it fully. However, if one looks past the intellectual analyses, it is likely that any listener can find some form of jazz that he or she likes, whether its the straight-ahead swing of Glenn
Miller, the writhing bebop lines of Dizzy Gillespie, the cool jazz of Miles Davis, the funk of Herbie
Hancock, or, hopefully, the rich harmonies of Dan Freedman.
Please please please please please give Dan a call at (808) 347-3069. Dan's goal for reviewers is to make the process as natural and painless as possible. Rather than fretting over something, please either pick up the phone and ask Dan a question, or email him at dan@dan88.com
.
Any or all parts of this document may be used in the review, as you see fit. A Microsoft Word version of this document will be available online at www.dan88.com/downloads .
Mahalo from Honolulu pp Dan Freedman
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