The Greg Silva Trio has released this long awaited CD My Heart My Only. Featuring 10 original compositions, Silva and his two players display a host of soundscapes with their rangy talents. With Silva on upright bass and vocals, supported by pianist Jim Shanahan and drummer Steve Langone, this trio works their way through a waltz, a ballad, and a few up tempo romps with the greatest of ease.
Opening with “Marty’s Waltz,” the trio offer a free flowing sprinkle of piano notes, notes that ride off into the horizon with individual sparkle. Silva’s bass treads lightly underneath this melodic line, giving the piano an appropriately self-restrained low end to travel over. Meanwhile, Langone’s ever so tasteful drum work creates motion filled patterns, patterns that could allow the other two instrumentalists to take the piece in any direction they’d like to go in.
“Fogo A Go Go” finds Shanahan tapping out a sprightly melody. Each of his piano notes hit the listener just right, individual snaps of something bright, inviting, and rhythmically enchanting. Silva and Langone support the jaunty ivory keys with a sublime, understated pattern, a breezy groove that functions at once as a push and a gliding accompaniment.
Silva’s original composition, title track “My Heart My Only,” finds him in fine form as vocalist. His tender hush just barely kisses the instrumentation beneath the vocal line with an unusual smoothness. Accompanied by a tender run of piano notes, pulpy bass tones, and some subtle touches on the drums and cymbal, this becomes a winsome, classy, piano bar hit.
“May’s Blues” finds the trio pumping things out at a more bopping pace. Aggression is key as these players tap out an urgent piano line, thumpy, hefty bass lines, and speedy drum fills and hi-hat work. It’s has a lot of action going on, as it expresses a lot of difficult emotions, and it has enough of a blues flavor to keep things earthy, organic, real.
Another ballad feeling number is called “It’s All In Her Smile.” This briskly paced number thumps its way forward with a nudge from the upright bass. One can feel its low end presence quite prominently here, as it’s a motivating force as well as a perfect time keeper. Shanahan keeps thing merry and polite with his consistent tinkling of his ivory keys, coloring this number brightly with his soothing tone and emotional vibe. The stick work here is enticing, vibrant while remaining in an appropriate support position. It’s uncanny how well this trio can read each other on so many levels at once and respond according to time, color, tone, emotive qualities, and much more.
Silva gets a second chance to strut his vocal stuff on “Close To Your Heart.” Brisk, mid-tempo, he has to move things vocally at a good clip while a lively accompaniment takes place underneath his voice. His song shines the most when he breezes through his chorus. He sings a barely perceptible amount faster during the refrain, giving lift, wind, sustain to a piece that already moves steadily forward with fine ripples from piano, bass, and drums.
“Blue Nerak” has a sly feeling in its pulpy groove and slick drum work. The rhythm section spruces things up while the piano offers a perky melodic line full of joyful spikes. This is jazz at its coolest. It has the intricacy and improv of sophisticated music while remaining hip, modern, something that could’ve only been born after the invention of cool.
“Saturday Evening Prayer,” a slow, soulful, meditative piece, works wonders for the heart and mind as well as the ears. There is a depth of feeling moving around in this down tempo work. A lengthy piece, it slowly rubs the instruments together to come up with something that settles some place deep within the listener. Piano notes take their time expressing their blues while some cymbal work creates a moody stir, like something rustling in the wind. An upright bass politely asserts itself, introduces itself to the listener’s mind, then offers its own depth of feeling with easefully, tastefully, and moodily plucked low end lines. This one makes the listener picture a jilted lover sitting at a bar contemplating the what, why, and huh of a recently failed relationship while nursing a whiskey and beer chaser.
Hipster bop abounds in “So Sorry.” Despite the morose title, this piece tells all of those squares to make room for all the finger snapping daddy-ohs. Snappy instrumentation clears the path for Silva’s voice on this album’s third and final vocal number. For a love song, it moves at a brisk clip. Silva meets the challenge of cruising his voice over many nuanced hipster nudges in the melodic line and in the breezily swinging rhythm section. It’s like he’s found the right day to fly his kite, and it’s remaining up in the air, high up, riding along many breezes, with air currents to keep its right place, aloft.
Greg Silva Trio close out their CD with “Her Goodbye,” a tune that commences with assertive, flinty notes from a 1990 Warwick Thumb Bass 5-String and continues on to accompany itself with more rumbling bass notes in the backdrop. Silva certainly evokes the feeling that the title expresses, and that’s pretty good for a guy who only has two basses to express himself with in this otherwise unaccompanied close out track.
Silva and his trio mates conjure many vibes with this fine document of sophisticated music. After one knows enough about music to play jazz, it remains the essential mission to find meaning and emotion in any number. Greg Silva Trio manages that task well on My Heart My Only.
