Though most of the music was composed by pianist Dave Palmer, the three works composed by Earl Harvin, Fred Hamilton and Horace Silver, respectively, stand as compellingly rendered segments of the larger "journey." Seldom do you find a cache of jazz music so even-handedly filled with both complexity and clarity. Throughout this collection there are innumerable whispered dialogues between instruments. At many unpredictable intervals and with no distraction from the primary movement forward of the central melodies, the bass and the piano or the drums and the saxophone will speak briefly between the lines, small conversations between instruments that emphasize the larger mystery being spelled out by the whole ensemble. This is accomplished with such ease that you are given a palpable sense of their being bound by this fresh vocabulary of sweet sounds as if by blood.

It is not easy to pick favorite tunes from this collection; each composition offers so much, but I suppose you might pay special attention to the work of Dave Palmer and Fred Hamilton on Disturbing Tranquillities, the sax of Shelley Carrol on Naraganset, and Earl Harvin's careful genius on Forget Your Reason. Along with the great playing by these guys come the great range in mood of the compositions themselves. If music is, in fact, a language that encompasses both pre-verbal and beyond verbal understandings of human experience. The Earl Harvin Trio/Quartet is arguably one of the great new musical finds of this decade, featuring four men whose eloquence in this meta-language is beautifully, intelligently, and sometimes madly, enchanted and inspired.

Tim Seibles
April 25, 1995
Boston, Mass.
Poet Tim Seibles is the author of Body Moves, Hurdy Gurdy and Kerosene.