John Taylor As it is

John Taylor and his two minds. A cryptic title for the new work of the English piano player, which was released a little more than one year after his previous recording for CAM JAZZ, “Giulia’s Thursdays”. This is a concise album, for piano only (or at least so one might assume), in which Taylor bares himself, revealing two sides of his personality: his innermost, quiet and introspective side as opposed to his more lively, vivid, and cheerful side. Are these his “two minds”? A quite regular alternation of pieces in opposite moods seems to confirm this assumption. The enigmatic words with which Taylor comments on his album lead to the same conclusion. But, certainly, that’s not all. It’s not by chance either that Taylor talks about being “in two minds whether to make this recording a solo or a duet project”.

GRAMMY nominated - 2005 - Jazz instrumental
What Now? continues Wheeler’s exploration of a drumless modern jazz approach and features him on flugelhorn only. Taylor joins Wheeler again for this project, in addition to other longtime musical collaborators, bassist Dave Holland and tenor saxophonist Chris Potter. What Now? features eight original compositions by Wheeler and displays a fluidity of band interplay that comes from the personal working history these four great musicians have of each other, as Ira Gitler explains in the album’s liner notes. Wheeler adds, “Strong players as these three are an orchestra in themselves. You give them a piece of paper and you don’t have to say anything.”

John Mayer's 2013 album, the Americana-tinged Paradise Valley, is an introspective if somewhat more upbeat affair than his similarly country-inflected 2012 release, Born and Raised. With that album, Mayer was coming off a rough career patch that found him issuing a mea culpa for an infamously loose-lipped 2010 Rolling Stone interview. Making matters worse, in 2011 the singer/songwriter announced he would be going on extended hiatus from performing while he received treatment for granulomas found near his vocal cords. Subsequently, with Born and Raised, Mayer moved away from the commercial pop of 2010's Battle Studies and toward an intimate, largely acoustic, '70s Laurel Canyon-inspired sound with songs that featured plenty of apologetic soul-searching.

A solo programme of Taylor performing all his own music virtually guarantees something out of the ordinary. So it proves here. In a beautiful exposition of sweepingly romantic piano playing, he creates a series of moods, by turns sad, nostalgic, joyful, dancing and playful, which have a suggestive capacity as varied as their emotional climate, though his titles don't always give a clue; Wych Hazel is more like the memory of a past love, for example. He's also a great melodist; both In Cologne and the very different In February are stunningly beautiful examples of his ability to come up with charming themes and match them with equally beguiling solos. And three short, free pieces show, paradoxically, how disciplined and imaginative, in terms of line and harmony, he is in a context like this. Lovely

Mayall's first post-Bluesbreakers album saw the man returning to his roots after the jazz/blues fusion that was Bare Wires. Blues from Laurel Canyon is a blues album, through and through. Testimony to this is the fact that there's a guitar solo only 50 seconds into the opening track…