Brian Dickinson with the Penderecki String Quartet - October Songs
(Cellar Music Group, 2026)
Toronto pianist Brian Dickinson is a Juno Award-winning jazz pianist, composer, and arranger who has been a fixture on the Canadian jazz scene for over 35 years. Dickinson’s style possesses a clear melodic flow and emotional composure, drawing influences from modern masters like Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett.
October Songs is Dickinson’s experiment. The project is a collaboration featuring music written for a specific ensemble: Instrumentation: Piano, bass, saxophone, and the Penderecki String Quartet. The composer wanted to blend traditional jazz with the subtle textures of a string quartet. The results are sumptuous and warm. Dickinson crafts a mini-suite capped with William Walton’s “Touch Her Soft Lips and Part.” Ballad driven, the collaboration is just short of a jazz trio with strings and more of a classical-jazz eutection, a natural mixing of two solid elements into a liquid medium.
Dickinson on piano with tenor and soprano saxophonist Kelly Jefferson and bassist Jim Vivian hold up the jazz end of this project. The Penderecki String Quartet rings in with violinists Jerzy Kaplanek and Jeremy Bell, violist Christine Vlajik, and cellist Katie Schlaikjer. The collaboration clicks on the internal three-part suite “October Songs.” “Part 1” captures the first crisp air in the morning, an autumnal kiss, insistent and urgent as much as it is playful. Dickinson’s eye and ear are always on the melody. With the piano, he paints the complexity of Fall.
“Part 2” incorporates the stings more fully into the sonic conversation. Slow and introspective, “Part 2” is ruminative, thoughtful, and considerate. The piano-violin duet introduction resolves into a gentle undulation. This is crepuscular music, anticipating twilight. “Part 3” is a resolution of sorts, ushering in a positive closure to the suite that develops into the most jazz-line section of the piece.
Dickinson’s experiment is successful, rendering a cogent sum to its varied autumnal parts.