"This excellent contemporary jazz release is the result of cross-national internet file sharing, often the recipe for clunky step-on-each-other's-foot interplay but you wouldn't know it from the seamless results to be heard here. The multi...-talents on display include trumpet from Cologne (Hans Peter Salentin), saxophone and guitar from Oklahoma (Brian Mitchell Brody, Max Ridgway), flute and bass from New York (Cheryl Pyle, Tony Cimorosi), electric bass from Tennessee (Sean O'Bryan Smith) -- all under the benign leadership of keyboardist Stan Zaslavsky who has dubbed the whole project Kazhargan World. (One can assume that Stan Z himself hails from that former Soviet-bloc nation.)
In some ways this is a sunlit version of an intriguing, noirish ECM session from a few years back called NEW YORK DAYS, which was released under Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava's name but also included a even-handed mix of American and European musicians. The accessible sound on WONDERFUL TIMES is a post-fusion melange of late Miles themes and other jazz tropes but it's never overly abstract or avant-garde. There's a happy dancing quality to the whole affair. Hans Peter Salentin's strong trumpet work (alternating on mute) predominates but it is Cheryl Pyle's fluent flute work which truly shines in the mix. Pyle also contributes some evocative spoken word interludes ("Invisible Celebration," "Irene Was Here") her unmistakable American accent grounding this ostensible world project in some ideal corn-fed place in the listener's mind. Throughout Zaslavsky provides sympathetic support on acoustic and electric keys, giving ample room to his selected group of soloists, never once hogging the proceedings."
Richard Mortifoglio NYC
CDBABY
