Milwaukee-born pianist-composer Lynne Arriale's career roughly parallels that of her fellow Wisconsin Conservatory of Music graduate and recent Grammy winner Brian Lynch. Yet, while internationally acclaimed, her profile remains lower than Lynch’s.
Her 15th album demonstrates she is as accomplished, in her way, as trumpeter Lynch. Arriale has dedicated herself to the jazz piano trio form, and hers draws comparisons to preeminent trios led by Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. Yet, I hear her primary piano influence is McCoy Tyner, especially in her resounding lyricism and low-register comping for dramatic effect.
Artful drama abounds in this eloquent concept album that declares its seriousness right from the plangent opening minor chord of the classic gospel song “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” Arriale’s original “The Dreamers” urgently evokes the uncertain longing of millions of young American Latinx in political limbo.
The title song, by Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” both sung by K.J. Denhert, tenderly render portraits of humanity—Dylan’s gritty story-song hearing the chimes of freedom tolling “for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail…” and for “every hung-up person in the whole wide universe…”
