Vadim Neselovskyi’s Music for September Produced by Boston based jazz pianist Fred Hersh is a lyrical solo piano collection of standards, classics and originals.  The interplay between the left and right hand create a delightful conversation and dynamic orchestral palette while keeping the listener engaged throughout the program.  The piano here is recorded with a chamber like austerity avoiding the risk of ear fatigue that a solo piano album presents. Vadim’s fresh reharmonizations and musicality will keep you in suspense moment after moment, chord after chord.

The CD opens with an original composition Spring Song. The crystalline voicings brewing with inner fire set the listener in place for the painterly solo piano journey. Percussive ostinatos are groundwork for pentatonic right hand swirls punctuated with percussive Chick Corea like rhythms and harmonically rich arpeggios. Spring’s Inner Section shifts seamlessly into a darker color carried by suspenseful motivic development

Chopin’s Mazurka opens another chapter in the unfolding story of Music for September. In this reimagined classic the dynamic clarity, harmonic underpinning and syncopation inventively map out common ground between the late romantic harmonic language and contemporary jazz improvisation.

Sinfonia no. 11 in G minor by J.S. Bach carries us deeper into the story as we are treated to a cool reading with organically extrapolated ideas musically performed without the affectations that sometimes accompany improvisational variations of classic repertoire. 

Similar to a great suspenseful movie where each moment unravels unexpected turns and surprises the intriguing sense of the composer searching and discovering his way through these improvisations holds the listener track after track. In many ways the record feels like a duo thanks to Vadim’s finely tuned right/ left hand independence. The references to traditional piano swing in Birdlike never become pedantic but are folded into Vadim’s pianistic Utility Belt.

The denser texture and reharmonizations in the classic Body and Soul like the myriad paths in the forest of sonic expectations and deviations from expectations within another classic All the Things You Are will bring the listener back to the recording time after time. Jarrett like flourishes often erupt from the calm Coplandesque landscape of the familiar bridge – as Vadim moves fluidly from modern classical references to post bop Jarrett virtuosity – with the piano of course being the common denominator.

San Felio the 2^nd original opens with a Spanish flare. You can hear Vadim’s soulful singing along layered deeply into the mix here seasoning like a spice adding a subtle layer of participatory excitement.

The Rodgers and Hart standard My Romance freshly immerges from an imaginative intro. Contrapuntal voice leading in the Bill Evans tradition is folded into the kaleidoscopic piano odyssey. The head out of the lovely standard is original and confident – just some great playing !

Andantino in modo  de canzona by Tchaikovsky surprises with a vocal drenched in cinematic reverb --a whiskey fallen hipster voice with breathy and throaty accents in the tradition of the Brazilian soloists by way of the Ukraine …The left and right hand again – resume there discursive and painterly conversation ending the piece- the singer’s voice still resonating eerily like a ghost.

The collection closes with Epilogue another original – Cycling back to Vadim the composer and his relationship with the piano. Music for September offers fresh perspectives through the ocean of solo piano style and technique leaving us with a welcome voice in the symposium of solo piano recordings.