Review by: Captain Fidanza
This is a tricky one.
The cover says the CD is called ‘In The absence of Presence’ by Ommadon, but iTunes is telling me the CD is called ‘Morris Nanton Trio – Live at Shanghai Jazz, December 16, 2004’.
What am I supposed to make of that ?
The music coming out of the speakers certainly doesn’t sound as though it’s being played by someone called Morris Nanton so perhaps some wires have become entangled.
A cursory internet search has revealed Morris Nanton to be an eighty-four year old pianist from New Jersey who died in 2009, further proof that this music was the work of someone else I feel.
It certainly would be interesting to see an eighty-four year old man playing music like this in a jazz club and the idea brings to mind the performance of The Arkestra I saw at the Barbican last September, wherein numerous septuagenarians danced about on stage for nearly three hours as though they were teenagers. Good stuff.
When viewed close up, the images on the front and back covers of this CD look like the flames that are so vividly destroying the body of Thich Quang Duc in Malcolm Browne’s photograph of the most famous self-immolation in history. If they are indeed close ups of that image, the music provides an unbeatable soundtrack to a sustained analysis of that image – unpleasant, but necessary.