Burak Bedikyan Circle Of Life Albümü ile Caz Dünyasından övgü alıyor

This is the first time I listened to Burak Bedikyan. Although he seems like a pianist who basically gives performances in Turkey, we see he has worked with an ultra-fancy band featuring Chris Potter and Bill Stewart in this project who definitely attract great attention at all points. If any member would be included to these musicians, it seems that Scott Colley could give brilliant contribution. But If it comes to 4-beat orthodox performances, Peter Washington definitely increases the level. By the way, Potter and Washington [Greg Gisbert/On Second Thought (1996)],[Billy Drummond/Dubai (2006)] and Bedikyan and Washington [Ferit Odman /Nommo (2010)] have common history.Bedikyan has total of 12 tracks along with Lennon/McCartney’s “Here,There and Everywhere”. His “First Steps” is substantially good as a reminiscent of a Monk tune. Potter is greatly shining and Bedikyan is basically excellent at his solos.  Bill Stewart [Lage Lund/Foolhardy(2013)] can revitalise anyone with his drums playing which has a strike effect on even an inanimate body. Even these could be the reason for me to tell “I am happy to buy this album !The second song is “Here, There and Everywhere”. Even it is a performance in which the melody emphasis is made without Potter, Bill Stewart reacts to every melody played by Bedikyan. They make a good fist of playing as a trio.3rd song [Do You Still Have Hope] starts with the unaccompanied saxophone solo by Potter. Potter and Bedikyan have trades on solos. If it wasn’t a bossanova, they could make more aggressive performances on this one. 4th song [For Old Times Sake] is a swing song for the piano trio. In addition to that it has a beautiful melody, it gives a good feeling thanks to the vividly powerful rhythms of the performance. It has 8 bar trades between piano and drums with a bass solo, in which we may enjoy listening to the trio.5th and 6th songs are called [Prayer For Forgiveness Part 1: Delusion – Part 2: Serenity]. It is a performance where the improvisation is strong. Although Washington who takes a rest in these songs; Potter, Bedikyan and Bill Stewart present natural flavors with their beautiful performances. 7th song [Joy of Giving] is a smooth Bossa-Nova song.8th song [TF (for Tommy Flanagan )] is a composition dedicated to Tommy Flanagan. Probably, Bedikyan composed this in a period of his life when his emotions were dense. Touching us emotionally, this song does our heart good. Washington who had joined the “Tommy Flanagan Trio” long time ago makes sense of it as deserved.The remaining songs are odd-time or 3/4 and even-eights performances unlike some previous swing feel tracks. Regardless of the member or song, we had a great time listening to “Circle of Life” thanks to the musicians’ brilliant work. You can perceive the wall between Bedikyan’s “European” style and “Americanized” piano. Also we think it’s good not to feel the Turkish flavors (looks like he is Armenian in origin). Experienced producer Nils Winther makes us feel good with this release by the changing style of SteepeChase/Lookout.  !! Evaluation: 4 Stars (****) over 5 !![Source: http://narymusic2010.blog90.fc2.com/blog-entry-2799.html]