Greg Murphy

Snap Happy

Whaling City Sound

Pianist and composer Greg Murphy releases his eighth album as a leader and fifth for Whaling City Sound with Snap Happy. Primarily a trio album with bassist Obasi Akoto and drummer Steve Johns, guitarist Mark Whitfield joins on three tracks, and vocalist Sy Smith on one. It’s a high-energy album embracing straight-ahead, free improvisation, and fusion for over an hour’s worth of music with a mix of covers and originals. The high energy traces in part to Murphy’s highly percussive piano attack, evoking the great McCoy Tyner and the motoring support of his trio mates.

They take the opening chestnut, “On Green Dolphin Street,” up-tempo, as we get a taste of how Murphy marries his percussive style with acute lyricism and masterful command of dynamics. The trio flies through Wayne Shorter’s “Twelve More Bars to Go,” sustaining a blistering tempo throughout until coming to an abrupt halt. This vibrancy continues as the trio renders Chick Corea’s “Humpty Dumpty.”

Whitfield joins the proceedings for the first of his three, adding his fleet finger soulful guitar chops to George Duke’s “Geneva” along with Sy Smith’s vocals as the trio remains largely acoustic, with Murphy all over the ivories. A hush finally settles over the trio for a gorgeously sublime rendering of the Styne/Cahm ballad “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” showing how the energetic trio can play with restraint.

The title track is one of three originals, with Murphy on keyboards and Akoto on electric bass as they opt for the fusion route, joined by Whitfield, playing at the ridiculous tempo that is his hallmark. “Equality” has plenty of free acoustic improvisation from Murphy while drummer Johns delivers a thunderous solo as well. When Murphy returns after the drum solo, he’s intent on playing a ‘happy’ blues.  “Proximity” features heavy work by Johns on the toms and even more free-ranging excursions from the trio. The band returns to their fusion approach, with resonating Rhodes from Murphy and later synth, with scorching licks from Whitfield on Lenny White’s “Shadow of Lo.”  If you’re hearing Corea’s Return to Forever, you are spot on, as that’s where the tune was first played.

As is the wont of so many pianists, Murphy turns to Monk for two tunes. He treats “Pannonica” as a bossa nova and “Monk’s Mood” as a jazz waltz in synch with the bass-drum tandem navigating the angular, tricky rhythms. Practically in symmetrical bookend fashion, the trio turns to another jazz standard, “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm, in their by now familiar galloping pace, complete with another stirring workout on the drum kit.

In one single album, Murphy and his trio mates offer a wide potpourri of jazz idioms, mostly forcibly but with plenty of finesse when called for. It’s as versatile a piano trio as any you’ll hear playing today.

– Jim Hynes

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