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CD Review: Roberta Piket & Alternating Current- I'm Back In Therapy And It's All Your Fault

Label: Thirteenth Note Records

Personnel: Roberta Piket-Wurlitzer electric piano with effects, Bruce Arnold-electric guitar, Cliff Schmitt-electric basses, Kirk Driscoll-drums

Roberta Piket is one of those rare players who is not only adept at her craft, but is attuned to the business of music as well. While many jazz players are aware of how difficult it is to keep body and soul together in the arts, too many remain in the problem and not in the solution. Since her 1998 debut recording with Unbroken Line on Criss Cross Jazz, Roberta has been busy as leader, player, composer, teacher, and all-round jazz survivor. Alternating Current, her active electric ensemble, is just one of many projects that keep her from the self pity that plagues so many starving artists. With that in mind, I’m betting that the title of this new endeavor is both autobiographical and tongue in cheek.

In a 2001 interview, Ms. Piket alluded to being a more prolific composer when not involved in a romantic relationship, and I’m assuming that a bunch of the tunes on this disc were composed during one of those periods of self imposed musical focus. Roberta says that playing the vintage Wurlitzer electric keyboard has been a freeing experience that she is able to bring back to her first love, the acoustic piano.

For I’m Back in Therapy she has written a fine bunch of tunes that maximize the interplay between her Wurlitzer and Bruce Arnold’s electric guitar. In the wrong hands this combination of guitar and piano and electricity can get messy, but it works well here. The timbres of this ensemble suggest at times the hard-edged sound of Miles Davis’ late 60’s electric bands, and at other times approximate a more "accessible" sound akin to perhaps Tom Scott’s L.A Express minus the saxophone. Both the writing and soloing is more complex and musical than much of the predictable fare that has given jazz-rock fusion a bad name. There are brief moments when the use of electronic effects feels a bit overdone and detracts from the compositions, but all in all this is a highly competent well-played musical offering.

                                                                                                - Richard Mayer

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