Soft Hands (album) explained

Soft Hands
Type:studio
Artist:Ron McClure
Cover:Soft Hands Ron McClure.jpg
Genre:Jazz
Label:SteepleChase
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Soft Hands is a 2007 jazz album featuring trio led by bassist Ron McClure and also featuring tenor saxophonist Rich Perry and multi-instrumentalist George Colligan, here playing piano.[1]

The album features eight mid-tempo tracks and ballads penned by McClure. Released on SteepleChase (SCCD 31615), the album is being distributed by Discovery.

Reception

The album is listed as one of the "Core Collection" albums in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings.[2] In the later The Penguin Jazz Guide the authors reflected "These eight tunes are the work of a mature and assured composer and the drummer less format keeps the tempos open enough to allow at least some of the songs to change direction internally"[3]

JazzTimes singled out the title track, "Fortune Gardens", "I Never Knew" and "Gates of Saffron" as particularly notable, commenting that with these songs "the trio achieves a collective weaving of lines that is memorable, each player feeding off the ideas of the others", lifting it into the realm of "music of the contemplative."[4]

Track listing

All tracks written by Ron McClure

  1. "Life Took Over" – 7:58
  2. "Altered Bells" – 7:33
  3. "May Day" – 7:10
  4. "Fortune Gardens" – 8:28
  5. "I Never Knew" – 6:54
  6. "Soft Hands" – 7:08
  7. "Gates of Saffron" – 8:52
  8. "Marble Room" – 11:18

Personnel

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Soft Hands . . September 26, 2012.
  2. Book: Cook, Richard. Richard Cook (journalist). Brian Morton . Brian Morton (Scottish writer) . The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings. 1992. 9th. The Penguin Guide to Jazz. 2008. Penguin. New York. 978-0-14-103401-0 . 967.
  3. Book: Morton, Brian. Brian Morton (Scottish writer). Richard Cook . Richard Cook (journalist) . The Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in the 1001 Best Albums . 1992. 10th . The Penguin Guide to Jazz. 2010. Penguin. New York. 978-0-14-104831-4. 712–713.
  4. Book: JazzTimes, Volume 38, Issues 1-5. 2008. Jazztimes. 118.