Shimmer (Fresh Sound New Talent) 2014

Shimmer Cover

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All About Jazz

“Invigorating and delivered with a razor-sharp focus, Grenadier’s spine-tingling solos cast an aura of excitement that prevails from beginning to end.” –  Glenn Astarita 


Boston Globe

“With his stylistic versatility, dark lyricism, and aggressive imagination, trumpeter Phil Grenadier can do just about anything.”  – Jon Garelick


Jazz Da Gama

“…Thus the trio is unique in the many-splendored music that unfolds on music that has been played often, yet sounds so new and wondrous in the re-invention of some of the most beautiful and classic charts. Although the spotlights have been equally distributed during the playing much of this is due to the magnificent virtuoso playing of Phil Grenadier.”  – Raul da Gama

Jazz Journal

“I’m a great admirer of the trumpeter’s previous Fresh Sound releases, which team him with such intriguing names as Ethan Iverson, Seamus Blake and bassist brother Larry Grenadier and in the case of Playful Intentions see him tackle contemporary material by Fiona Apple, Beck and the then (maybe no longer?) de rigueur Radiohead. There’s also a great duo version with Larry of Lonely Woman, the Horace Silver version.Here, though, Phil and his two associates tackle an hour’s worth of standards and jazz repertory pieces without the safety net of a harmony instrument or a second horn to share point. It’s intriguingly open-ended music, apparently recorded as heard and without post-fixing. You Don’t Know What Love Is immediately suggests that no one is going to lose sight of the original song, or not for any distance, but that there’s liberty to take liberties with it. Elsewhere, almost everything is revoiced and often significantly repositioned. Grenadier has a nice discursive approach to phrasing and a fondness for middle-to-low register playing that gives the set an air of conversational directness. Paul Smoker has worked in similar situations, but estimable as he always is, he has a faintly professorial manner that Grenadier engagingly sets aside. This sounds like a group convened by friends. Slater doesn’t hesitate to chip in when he has things to say but Kocharyan (who’s a chap, by the way) chatters away regardless underneath, supportively but also self-startingly; he’s not here just to keep time. Footprints, a long version, brings it to a terrific end.How good it would be to hear this trio in a club, but this is almost as close, a “live” document of a (hard-)working trio.” – Brian Morton