Pat Bianchi

Perhaps no other instrument in jazz boasts such a classic and beloved status as the Hammond B3 organ. On stage it sits like a majestic relic from jazz's distant past, a slightly odd Rube Goldberg machine whose spinning speakers produce a saturated, unmistakable sound imbuing every performance with it's own recognizable style. That style has set deep roots in American music including, of course, jazz and blues, but it has also provided undeniable contributions to pop, funk and soul. So it should really be no surprise that organist Pat Bianchi would choose a program of Stevie Wonder's music for his second Savant Records release.

The tenor saxophonist Tim Warfield is pointing toward a jazz sound that reaches back 60 years in real time and a psychic millennium away in media time. You'll hear musicians playing licks on A Sentimental Journey that were comfortably modern in the late 1950s. But there's a way to do that without seeming dogmatic or conceptually forced or just left behind; jazz is a cumulative art, a continuity. ~ AllAboutJazz