"I really wanted to take the music back, all the way back, to my roots," said Steve Klink to a journalist recently in describing his long-awaited new CD, Searching the Blue. Since the success of Feels Like Home and Places... (instrumental tributes to singer/songwriter icons Randy Newman and Joni Mitchell respectively) and Blue Suit (recorded with drummer Gregory Hutchinson), "...I have always wanted to do an album of all-original material that describes me and the musical world I grew up in." This talented piano player/composer was raised in America's heartland and his deep emotion and passion for music can be felt in every note he plays. "The Midwest of the US is a special place. Off the beaten track, it does not feature the congested jazz scenes of America's big cities, rather, when I was growing up, it was about Folk Music, Blues and space."Steve always knew that he would write music, and the wide-open plains of his youth created the pallette upon which he assimilated more and more influences. As a child he journied with his family across Eastern and Western Europe before he moved to Boston and then to New York. "No matter where I found myself, I was always collecting and listening to music, just writing more and more." As a student of jazz composition at The New England Conservatory in Boston, Steve felt a need to reduce and miniaturize, to get away from the modern idioms of mainstream jazz. "Although the music on this CD is mainly derived from the jazz tradition, the word 'jazz' has become too ambiguous a term for me. 'Jazz' can in different contexts mean everything today from pop to Neumusik. On Searching the Blue I like to call this music Folkbop because it is basically dealing with different kinds of American folk forms and has nothing to do with the more "intellectual" elements of jazz at all. Except perhaps for a bit of Bebop a la Bud Powell..."Folkbop is then a blend of the folkier elements of the jazz tradition: Blues, Soul, Gospel and even Swing, together with Hardbop and Bebop. All this combined with the Folk music of the Midwest. "Guitar is for sure the basic American folk instrument. As a pianist playing with many different guitarists, I had to change the way I thought of the piano..." Wide-open voicings, spaced similarly to the open strings of a guitar, Steve's simple, transparent piano style and use of Folk/Country idioms is reminiscent of Ray Charles' sojourn into Country music. "In retrospect, growing up in Iowa was great. There were fantastic bands and artists like Greg Brown, Bo Ramsey and Big Wooden Radio. Nearby in Chicago there were Blues piano players like Sunnyland Slim. Bluegrass bands were passing through all the time on tour between the coasts. "The diversity of original music on Searching the Blue is impressive. A delicious blend of down-home blues, luscious ballads, sizzling up-tempos, canons, fugues and gospel shouts, it represents the culmination of many years of hard work. "Each song is its own little musical world, concisely arranged, similar to the way a singer/songwriter would write each tune. Basically the piano trio, featuring Marcus Rieck on drums and Volker Heinze on contrabass, provides the foundation on which each world is built". So compositions like "Starting Over" begin as a country-fugue and develop into a blues march a la Gene Harris and the Three Sounds. "Figurin' a Question" is a contrabass-canon theme that develops first into a burning up-tempo blues and returns as a counter theme in "Askin' " as a country/gospel extended work of multiple forms. The CD also features some stellar live performances and opens with a bugaloo from the Quasimodo jazz club in Berlin, part of Minor Music's "Wir-Jazz Wunderkinder" tour.In Europe the response to Steve's music has been tremendous. Germany's Der Spiegel wrote: "...most of all Steve inspires us with his energetic drive and his connection to Gospel and Blues: a totally enjoyable experience, not just for jazz fans!" Recently Steve's music was featured in a continent-wide broadcast of Europe's national radio stations sponsored by the European Broadcast Union.Steve Klink's music is here to stay. Searching the Blue takes the listener on a journey across a romantic era of America's rich musical tradition and through the history of its folk forms. Searching the Blue (DMG 54.218061.2)
