Leslie Pintchik: So Glad to Be Here

Understatement has the neatest way of commanding your attention. Leslie Pintchik rarely raises her pianistic voice on So Glad to Be Here (Ambient), yet her quiet-as-it’s-kept style captivates. Her medium-tempo excursions contain a subtle power, but it’s Pintchik’s ballads that possess an individual poetry. On Irving Berlin’s rarely heard “You Keep Coming Back Like a Song” and the originals “Mortal” and “Something Lost,” the pianist digs deep burrowing into introspective caverns, yet never loses herself in rhapsodic musings. The interaction between Pintchik and her husband, Scott Hardy (yet another exceptional bassist deserving wider prominence), is, understandably, of one mind. Percussionist Satoshi Takeishi’s contributions are more unsettling. Although a sensitive and alert player, Takeishi sounds as if he’s playing a kit consisting of cymbals and overturned plastic wastebaskets; the dull thud his “drums” produce divert your ear from the mellifluous tones of his bandmates.

Originally Published January 1, 2005