John Maurer: Songs for My Son
John Maurer

At first glance, the debut album by trumpeter John Maurer would seem to be an eclectic collection of jazz standards and classical pieces. Closer inspection, however, reveals it to be a concept album whose ten selections work through life's stages in thoughtfully sequenced manner. Neither an ironist nor avant-gardist, Maurer wears his heart on his sleeve on a recording that dedicates many pieces to central figures in his life, including his sister, parents, and most of all his wife Sarah and first-born Patrick, whose footprint adorns the album cover. Though Songs for My Son is firmly ‘in the tradition,' so to speak, it's no less satisfying for being so, especially when many of the pieces are duets the trumpeter performs with guests, among them pianist Nate Petley, percussionist Jaren Angud, and bassist Ian K. Bainbridge.

A few words about Maurer: a native of Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania and graduate of Pennsylvania State University with a master's degree in Trumpet Performance, he's presently head of the brass and woodwind studio at the Black Bear Conservatory of Music in Hawley, Pennsylvania and teaches at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York. He's performed throughout the US as well as in Canada and Cuba, and has shared the stage with figures such as Howard Johnson, Eddie Henderson, and Slide Hampton.

Ably accompanied by Bainbridge's bowing, Maurer emotes expressively in the opening “Nature Boy,” the trumpeter largely hewing to its melodies and resisting indulgent impulses that would dilute the performance. It's a strategy he employs elsewhere, too, and not unwisely: when a composition's as strong as, say, “In a Sentimental Mood,” embellishment is hardly necessary. Not only is the material wide-ranging, so too is his trumpet sound. On Giuseppe Torelli's four-movement Sonata in D, G.1, Maurer's performance suggests the playing of a piccolo trumpet, especially when much of it's in the upper-register, whereas plunger-like effects are used for his sorrowful rendering of “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”

A somewhat brash attack is adopted for a trumpet-and-piano rendering of Vittorio Monti's rhapsodic “Czardas,” a spirited piece that, like the Torelli Sonata, leaves little doubt as to Maurer's playing ability. His eloquent treatment of “Fantasie of Passage” also speaks to the trumpeter's command of pacing and control. If Leonard Bernstein's “Rondo for Lifey” sounds light-hearted, it might be because the composer wrote it for Judy Holliday's Skye Terrier; regardless, the piece adds levity to a recording rich in emotional colour.

April 2018