Hazelrigg Brothers Present: Songs We Like

There are many ways to pay homage to icons of music, but one that manages to convey their deeply personal impact on your own music, while at the same time welcoming the listener to the music is surely one of the most satisfying. So it is with this outing Songs We Like from the Hazelrigg Brothers: pianist George and bassist Geoff – and let’s not forget drummer John O’Reilly, brother from another mother – offering a set of pieces inspired by real-world ideas, inspired also by musicians from different eras who still make the world go round: Jimi Hendrix, Sting, Led Zeppelin, Béla Bartók, Georg Friedrich Händel among others, also making this a very disc infused with the kind of heady imagination that transforms the resonances of these Hazelrigg Brothers into a series of vivacious musical adventures.

These eleven tunes reference all manner of sources without any sense of contrivance, traversing heavy metal, early jazz-rock fusion, homespun pastoralism, jittery quasi-Hungarian folkloric music, celebratory canonic music of the early 18th century of Handel together with infectious grooves and many other territories with a natural ease. But the Hazelrigg Brothers (plus one) also spring enough good-natured surprises on listeners to dismiss any notion of indolence and complacency.

The recorded sound is expertly shaped around the trio and the excellent soli so that it is impossible not to be knocked out by the sheer creative firepower of each artist as well as by a recording that meets every demand of the audiophile in the capture and delivery of this music.

Track List: 1: Living In The Past; 2: Catch A Star; 3: If 6 Was 9; 4: Evening In The Country; 5: Ten Years Gone; 6: King Of The World; 7: Passacaglia, 8: From Daughters of Zeus, 9: Urania; 10: Spirits In The Material World; 11: What Is And What Should Never Be.

Personnel: George Hazelrigg: piano; Geoff Hazelrigg: bass; John O’Reilly Jr: drums.

Released: 2017
Label: Independent
Runtime: 40:25