New Release: Billy Lester "Storytime" (JKA 001) Street Date May 7, 2013 Featuring Billy Lester Solo Piano |
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 Artist: Billy Lester
Title: Storytime
Label: JKA
Catalog Number: JKA 001
UPC Code: 887516077319
Release Date: May 7, 2013
Track listing and track times:
1. Prologue 8:57
2. Lullaby 4:18
3. Lightning Man 4:26
4. Under the Stars 4:35
5. Ode to Bud Powell 2:29
6. Dark Streets 5:03
7. Bonanza 6:27
8. Another Dream 6:19
9. Color Red 2:04
10. Sal Mosca 3:59
11. Encore 3:25
All Compositions by Billy Lester
Recorded: October 2010 & August 2011
Oktaven Audio, Yonkers, NY
Artists Home Market: USA
My two fondest childhood memories are hearing music and stories. As the son of a jazz musician, it was very common to be lulled to sleep by music. Whether tucked into bed or tucked onto a banquet at the Village Vanguard, I recall both the soothing and exciting sounds of jazz playing into the wee hours. But equal to the jam sessions were the tales: children’s books read aloud or improvised oral narratives—these also were my nightly entertainment, and the perfect panacea for bedtime resistance. So it is no wonder I make these associations while listening to Storytime, the new solo piano album by my father, Billy Lester. My father has always been a musical storyteller. Like his heroes Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Lennie Tristano, and Sal Mosca, Billy Lester’s improvisations are uniquely personal, turning familiar songs and chord progressions into entirely individual inventions, or what could be described as musical storytelling. In fact, it was these giants of jazz who described the art of improvising as such. Billie Holiday talked about needing to experience a song in order to sing it. Charlie Parker famously opined “music is your own experience: if you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” But it was my father’s first major influence, Lester Young, who referred to his music as “the stories I like to tell.” Storytime is constructed like a narrative, using sequencing as its contextual arc with each track as the content. The first tune, “Prologue,” begins with atonal melodic musings. These make way for dense cluster chords, varied tempos and complex counterpoint. But this storm of sound leads seamlessly into swinging bass lines and bebop-inspired right hand licks accompanied by simple left hand chords. “Prologue” is essentially an overture, as it sets the stage for the big story to come: a story of contradiction. The record proceeds to conjure story imagery quite literally, with tracks like “Dark Streets” and “Color Red,” until it lands on another ode of sorts, “Sal Mosca.” In this tune the majestic chords and right-handed flutters bring to mind Mosca’s incredible solo work from the late 1970’s and early ’80’s. While this track could be seen independently as an homage to Mosca (Lester’s mentor), it also works as a penultimate story moment in the context of the album. Lester ushers in his late teacher and muse, here as deus ex machina, to assist in bringing us to the album’s conclusion—“ Encore,” a rhythmically light and bouncy medium-tempo number that bids us farewell. It swings invariably like the jazz that influenced this set. Yet, keeping to the overall story arc of contradiction, it abounds with harmonic questions, some unanswered, and melodic peaks that push the boundaries going way out of the comfort zone of the listener’s ears. Great music is not required to be subjective. But when it is, we get to feel we are being spoken to directly. It’s as if the club, concert hall, or stereo dissolves and we are alone with the artist, one-on-one. To put it in simpler terms: we get to be told a story. This wonderful and invaluable experience of subjective creation makes us feel unique and enlightened. This is what you will experience with Storytime, and all of Billy Lester’s music for that matter. This is something special. Because when childhood evaporates into a series of distilled memories, there is nothing sweeter than to be whisked back to a time of innocence and told a story. —James Lester Dear Billy, Story Time is really connoisseur jazz. It shows off your unique, extremely well-informed and very imaginative musical approach, in full swing — as it were, and as it is! — at what seems like an ever higher level of daring and mastery. You open up dimensions of humor, wit, possibility, comfort, relaxation, ache, inquiry, discovery, adventure (not necessarily in that order). I don’t know where you’re going to go, but follow along, amused to recognize much of the language and some of the references, then you get there, and that was fun — how’d you do it? Through some sort of free-flowing association. Doesn’t matter what the song is, the song is you. Cool, Billy, great one, thanks.
—Howard (Howard Mandel, author, educator, president Jazz Journalists Association)
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