You've Changed
Louis Stewart and The Frank Harrison Trio's You've Changed was released in 2007 on the new Desert Island Jazz label. Stewart, one of the world's finest jazz guitar veterans with a career stretching back to the 1960s, here is teamed up with some of the very finest young talent from the UK scene in the incomparable piano genius Frank Harrison and his trio of Aidan O'Donnell on bass and Stephen Keogh on drums.
You've Changed was recorded in a single day, and by the sound of it probably consists of first takes, such is the immediacy, spontaneity and intimacy of the music.
With his elegant, easy-going guitar style, Louis Stewart is the perfect complement to the equally elegant ivories of prodigious piano talent Frank Harrison. The combination of these two players proves simply irresistable.
Six well chosen standards and one Stewart original make up You've Changed. Although one might have preferred one or two Harrison originals to have been thrown into the mix as well, the material works extremely well.
The resultant album is full of charm and elegance. Both Stewart and Harrison produce imaginative improvs that are never short on wit and that sometimes surprise, always delight. O'Donnell's bass and Keogh's traps are subtle and finely judged, subdued even at times, lively at others but never intrusive. They also deliver some fine, for the most part subtly understated solos.
Better partners for this album than Harrison and his trio and Stewart would be hard to imagine. The dialogue between Harrison and Stewart is always flowing and fluid, and indeed inspired. Both players sparkle brilliantly. The chemistry between Stewart and Harrison makes this album sheer magic. The voice of experience of the former, still on brilliant, top world-class form, meets that of youthful exuberance of the latter, already a dazzling world-class player unmatched certainly in his age group and already displaying astonishing maturity, and still holding the certain promise of so much more yet to come.
You've Changed swings with superb and gentle style. Although often harkening back to an earlier era, Stewart and Harrison maintain a very contemporary idiom throughout. As always, Harrison imbues his silences with more meaning and expression than most other players manage with their notes. This album is totally captivating, and just as totally consistent. If there is a fault, it's that it ends!
A cracker of an album, Louis Stewart and The Frank Harrison Trio's You've Changed ought not to be missing from any good jazz collection, jazz guitar or jazz piano collection, nor indeed, any good music collection, period. With as fruitful a collaboration as this one would truly hope for more of it at some point.
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