Kye Marshall Jazz Quartet. PENCIL BLUES. Zephyr/Westwind Productions.
I listened to this album on a blustery spring walk along Toronto Lakeshore’s royal route from Marina del Rey past Palace Pier to Palais Royal. Comfortable music, with a few innovations like Marshall bopping her cellostrings with the metal tip of a pencil. Her compositions are mostly in a trad jazz 30’s Joe Venuti groove, swinging some, funky some, with bits of bossa nova and touches of cabaret like you used to get in Tom Waits’ Swordfish Trombones. On the downside, the melodies and her progressions are slightly predictable: the improvs of Don Thompson on bass and guitarist Andrew Scott are much the best things on the album. Can’t say I care for the sound of Marshall’s cello,—thick, heavy, lugubrious, and sometimes grating like a rusty hinge even when she’s getting off on Bach’s first cello suite. Hinges and pencils aside, Confucious might have liked Kyle Marshall’s compositions because they are “harmonic, clear, smoothly continuous,” and like the Lakeshore’s royal route, easy to follow.