Musicians: Chris Greene – saxophone, Damian Espinosa – piano and keyboards, Marc Piane – acoustic bass, and Tyrone Blair – drums and percussion
Review:
Soul And Science 2: Electric Boogaloo, the new CD from the Chris Greene Quartet, is a stream of perennial beauty with harmonies that are always in season, and sprigs of polished saxophone buds that click with the album’s yummy mellifluous smooth jazz sorbets. The contemporary properties in the tracks are cologne by creamy textures quilted by keyboardist Damian Espinosa and combed by acoustic bass player Marc Piane, while drummer Tyrone Blair produces charismatic bumps and gentle rattles along the melodic paths. Bandleader and saxophonist Chris Greene cuts inventive improvisations that light up the tracks to a crystalline shimmer, which gives the tracks their uniquely embedded squiggles and sinuous squirms.
Numbers like “Amalgasantos” and “Bernie’s Tune” are upbeat, as Greene pumps agility into the crux of the melodies with rolling plumes of saxophone curls. The flexibility in Greene’s chord transitions are commendable, as he emotes a pensive mood in “Adamantium Part II” and exhibits a bountiful amount of pizzazz in the oscillating loops ringed around “Boogie 2.0,” while bowed beautifully by the bass pulls. The sharply cut notes of “Boogie 2.0” are in contrast to the jumping blues dunes, which make room for Greene’s saxophone to swell with excitement in “You Wing Again.” It’s a hot, Otis Redding-stylized, party track that speaks volumes about jazz music’s capabilities to move audience's bodies. The album chills to a lukewarm temperature and elegantly poised phrases in “The Oracle,” but regains its funk-jazz momentum in “Boogie” before sliding into the romantically jeweled atmospherics of “Take Care of Yourself.”
The Chris Greene Quartet embraces youthful energy and shows that jazz music feels at home on its own turf and in the fields of pop music. The group’s blending of jazz, blues, soul and funk has a newness about it, reflective of keyboardist Bob Baldwin. Audiences can sense that the Chris Greene Quartet is not an average jazz ensemble. They play classic jazz with a feistiness that promotes kinetic improvisations and stirs audiences’ sense of melodically sound orchestrations.
Tracks: Amagasantos, Bernie’s Tune, Adamantium Part II, Boogie 2.0, You Win Again, Boogie, The Oracle, Intro, Take Care Of Yourself
JazzReview.com
