A Supremely Gifted Pianist

Review of  “Live from the Center”

The Hudson Valley music community is certainly lucky to have David Arner.  Besides being a supremely gifted pianist the Port Ewen resident and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute jazz history professor has also been the curator of Kingston’s vital weekly New Vanguard series of creative improvised music for the past few years.  In its current home at the city’s Gallery at Deep Listening Space, the series’ performances boast some of the leading local, national and international artists of the free jazz/avant-garde world.  Outside of Manhattan, few cities have anything close to the surprising showcase of innovative music Arner presents like clockwork every Thursday night.  It’s an evening of high musical adventure.

Of course, many listeners don’t want adventure.  They want something they find easy to hum along to when they’re working out or staining the deck.  Fair enough.  We all love our comfort food, be it classical or classic rock.  But sometimes it just feels great to through away the roadmap, to use a side of the brain we normally leave dormant and surrender without judgment to whatever random sounds come our way – be they soothing or abrasive.  Anyone who appreciates Jackson Pollock’s paintings should have no trouble with this approach.

A Journey to the Outer Reaches of Discovery

Like Arner’s 2002 debut, “Solo Piano” (Dogstar), “Live from the Center” stars the pianist in unaccompanied mode.  Culled from his December 26th 2003 performance at the Center for the Performing Arts in Rhinebeck, the 70-minute disc features four of his lengthy “spontaneous compositions,” beginning with the nearly half-hour “Cosmos II.”  The classically trained Arner is often favorably compared to free jazz piano giants Cecil Taylor and Matthew Shipp; his use of thundering chords and runs of frantic, scrambled high notes make it easy to understand why.  Yet his style is equally marked by an ability to create deep chasms of almost unbearable tension, wide-open gaps that challenge the listener to the point of insanity by keeping him or her hanging on the eternities between every plinked key, every scraped piano string.  It feels good.

But as uncompromising as Arner’s technique is, the roots of tradition are still there for those who look hard enough: while “NY Nocturne’s” glittering free-flowing whirlpool appears completely un-tethered, one can actually pick out snatches of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” as well as the Harlem stride players like Art Tatum and James P. Johnson whom Arner sites in his liner notes.  (The tune inspired a poem by award-winning writer and former Freeman editor Mikhail Horowitz,  reprinted in the CD’s booklet.)

As Arner’s performances always are, “Live from the Center” is a journey to the outer reaches of discovery for both the artist and the listener.

Your ticket, please.

Peter Aaron, Kingston Daily Freeman (NY), October 21 2005