Rating:
Genre:
Jazz
Release Date: 06/23/2009
It isn't hard to see why some jazz listeners might approach
Doin' the D with trepidation. Flutist
Alexander Zonjic is a smooth jazz artist, and one of the musicians featured on this 2009 release is the saxophonist so many jazz musicians love to hate:
Kenny G. However, the album's title song boasts
Brian Bromberg on acoustic bass -- and keyboardist
Jeff Lorber co-produced many of the tracks in addition to helping with the composing, arranging, and engineering. So with that much participation from
Lorber, could
Doin' the D really be all bad? It isn't.
Lorber's presence is definitely a plus, and groove-oriented tunes like
"Tourista," "Good as Goldie," and
"Tongue Twister" (all of which
Lorber composed and co-produced with
Zonjic) balance commercial and artistic considerations. The track that features
Kenny G is an ethereal version of
Freddie Hubbard's
"Little Sunflower," which
Lorber arranged.
Kenny G, who is heard on soprano sax, still sounds like a poor man's
Grover Washington, Jr. -- which is the same problem that
Najee,
Boney James, and the late
George Howard have all had -- but
Lorber's appealing arrangement of the
Hubbard standard is the track's saving grace. Actually,
Lorber is the saving grace on much of
Doin' the D. As a flutist,
Zonjic has a long history of fluctuating between the funkiness of
Herbie Mann and
Hubert Laws on one hand and the blandness that has often plagued
Tim Weisberg on the other -- and
Lorber seems to bring out a bit more of the
Mann/
Laws side of things on the tunes that he contributes to. Unfortunately,
Lorber doesn't have nearly enough solo space as a keyboardist; one wishes he had a lot more room to stretch out. And most of the tracks that
Lorber is absent from are run-of-the-mill smooth jazz fluff. But this 40-minute CD has more pluses than minuses -- and for all its slick, glossy commercialism,
Doin' the D still has more integrity than many of the smooth jazz discs that were released in the late 2000s.
~Alex Henderson, All Music Guide
;)
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