Review
ROOTSTIME.BE
By Jan van Leersum
(Original Dutch)
Translation:
Alto saxophonist Nick Lyons and pianist Carol Liebowitz have been working together since 2007, creating a fully developed musical language. Yet this is only their second album as a duo, the first “First Set” was released on Line Art in 2017. Eight years later, their patience has paid off because The Inner Senses is a big step forward. Their collaboration sounds like a perfect musical synthesis in which alto saxophone and piano both enter into a duel and complement each other sublimely. Saxophonist Nick Lyons, born in 1982 and raised in the New York City area, studied at the Obelin Conservatory of Music with Donald Walden, Donald Byrd and Gary Bartz, and pianist Connie Crothers also played an important role in his training.
The album opens with “Hidden Source”, a medium tempo composition in which there are hardly any solos by Nick and Carol, no, they create the music together as a natural phenomenon. The title track “The Inner Senses” has a complex structure in which piano and saxophone explore and complement each other, very different and significantly different from standard jazz practice. In “Ontology”, a song composed by the aforementioned Connie Crothers (1941–2016), an American jazz improviser and pianist with whom both Nick and Carol had contact, their special collaboration is very clearly expressed.
Also intriguing is “River that flows both ways” (that is what the Lenape, an Indian tribe, called the Hudson), in which the piano paints a picture of the flowing river while the alto sax depicts the countercurrent, as it were, the result is intriguing music. “Night Sunflower” comes closest to what is considered standard in regular jazz, swing, solos and accompaniment with the piano as a steady surface and the alto sax swirling around it with beautiful outbursts and ending with a beautiful solo on the keyboard, great! There are ten superior compositions or improvisations on this “extremely successful album that becomes more and more fascinating with every listen, highly recommended!”