The Palomar Trio - The Song In Our Soul
(Turtle Bay Records, 2023)
Turtle Bay Records joins Arbors Records and Nagel Heyer Records in recording and releasing music from the big band and swing eras. In 2023 alone, the label has produced The Bix Centennial All Stars’ Celebrating Bix, Hannah Gill’s Everybody Loves A Lover, Mike Davis’s The New Wonders, and, now The Palomar Trio’s The Song In Our Soul. That is a pretty good track record for what many writers consider “just the same old stuff.” There is a vibrant market for that “same old stuff” deserving of words as much as any ethereal release by ECM.
The Palomar Trio is made up of Dan Levinson on clarinet and saxophone, Mark Shane on piano, and Kevin Dorn on drums. These musicians are specialists in the swing era between 1925 and 1935. The recital contained here is of the Depression Era off the beaten path with band members excluding music made cliche through over-recording in favor of some lesser-known gems of this golden age. Additionally, the trio avoids the labor-intense nature of the big band in favor of the smaller forces employed by the likes of Benny Goodman in his famous small group containing pianist Teddy Wilson and drummer Gene Krupa.
Fear not the diminutive, as they summon plenty of sound and space. Shane is a double-fisted pianist whose playing style is steeped in the era. Levinson is equally talented on clarinet and tenor saxophone, but it is his clarinet playing that steals this show. On Ellington’s 1932 recording, “Delta Bound,” Levinson molds his woody tone into an ambulation full of mirth and presence. Jimmy Noone’s 1931 “River, Stay ‘Way From My Door” is given a rollicking treatment, Dorn’s trap set propelling the piece forward. This was happy, hopeful music for anxious times, then and now.