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Buy this CDYou could call it a "concert hangover." The way you feel for a few days after experiencing an incredible live performance. You want to recapture the experience and share it with your friends, family, co-workers and even strangers you pass on the street. You load up your player with their music but the studio songs sound too polished, tweaked and restrained and live albums tend to rely more on delivering a series of hits than replicating a live performance. Brian Hughes has  bypassed all that and captured an incredible live performance intact on his new self-released live CD. Simply titled Brian Hughes Live, it is a chance for fans to hear him in a completely natural setting where he can cut loose and show all the facets of his artistry. It is also a chance for those who aren't fans yet to catch up on one of the best and most unheralded guitarists in out there. An added benefit - play this for anyone who believes that smooth jazz is "grandfather music" or that jazz in general is too technical, pristine and academic and it will shake those preconceptions away in the span of any given solo.

Recorded in Montreal by Espace Musique, Radio-Canada's music radio network in 2005, this CD is packed with moments of brilliance and genre-shifting depth. There are blistering rock guitar solos, pulse raising percussion jams, speedy flamenco runs, thumpin' bass breaks, keyboard solos that veer from atmospheric to fired up fusion. Through it all there are a group of innovative, seasoned musicians playing real instruments in a live setting. Hughes' guitar is upfront but this is an ensemble project. Every member of this tight-knit group gets their chance to stretch out and show what they can do, and what they can do is play with a wide range of nuance and style, seamlessly shifting from subtle to fiery to flashy and back often within the course of a even the briefest passage. The program is beautifully paced. The energized tracks and power solos are bridged by songs that are more meditative and nuanced. The set opens with "While The World Slowly Turns", which starts with Hughes playing a clean lead line over an atmospheric, dreamy background and evolves into a set of fast paced solos from Hughes and keyboardist Les Portelli fueled by drummer Tal Bergman and percussionist Ron Powell's backbeat. Percussion is upfront from the opening moment of the breezy, fast paced "The Beat." "Nasca Lines," originally on his second CD, Under One Sky, is a Spanish flavored world music showcase from the opening acoustic flamenco solo through some of the most precisely fast acoustic guitar work I've ever heard. The Latin flavor continues but shifts toward salsa on "Son Y Lola," one of the two big showcase songs on a a project where every song is full of showcase moments. The guitar and percussion pyrotechnics here are simply stunning. It is followed by gentle but foreground guitar line that opens "Omaha Unbound." Then "Thinkin' of You," opens it up again with some speedy jazzed up guitar licks driven by the tight rhythm section as it builds momentum into some powerful acoustic piano work from Portelli and a drum/percussion duel featuring an unidentified but fascinating sounding instrument in the middle of the song. "For You," a 13 minute jaw-dropper, has a gentle groove that gets taken into another zone entirely during Tim Landers' shape-shifting bass solo that mixes jazzed up subtlety with some rapid fire thumpin' that will shake your speakers and the walls behind them. Portelli then moves the song into jam band turf with a retro-rock B3 solo that builds to a sizzling crescendo as Hughes comes in for a wild electric guitar solo to take it home.  The lyrical "Endless Road" ends the set in a contemplative space, a good thing because if people left the concert right after "For You" they would probably carry all that unleashed energy into the parking lot and drive into each other in the eagerness to hit the open road.

There are so many amazing moments and thrilling solos on this CD that I actually did start writing them down at one point. It was tempting to list them here in the spirit of "you've gotta hear this..go to 4 minutes into track X!" Especially since they are such good reference points for people who roll their eyes when you use the words "jazz," "instrumental," or "smooth," or "adult oriented." The list got long and ended up encompassing about 71 of the 72 minutes of music here so the best thing to do is just start anywhere on any track and prepare to be blown away. Three of these songs clock in at over 11 minutes and the rest hover in the eight minute range but there is never a moment when any song drags or becomes overindulgent. As a matter of fact there is so much going on that it actually seems to run shorter than it really is. One thing for sure, you'll return to these songs time and time again and probably dig in and replay some of the solos repeatedly too. It's quite a package and quite a gift he has given us. Real live music with nothing filtered out by some "gatekeeper" that feels like they have to underestimate the listeners and stay in an artificial safety zone. Hughes does not underestimate us at all. Hopefully the reward will be substantial sales driven by word of mouth buzz. Theres no way to be quiet about this one after you  hear it. That's how music gets out there these days. Buy it, listen, then spread the word.

Listen to samples and buy both the CD and individual tracks on Brian's website: www.brianhughes.com
Song samples are also available on Brian's MySpace page:  www.myspace.com/brianhughesguitar

-Shannon West



CD Reviews return to home page interviews CD Reviews Concert Reviews Perspectives - SmoothViews State of Mind Retrospectives - A Look Back at a Favorite CD On The Side - The Sidemen of Smooth Jazz On the Lighter Side - A Little Humor News - What's New in Smooth Jazz Links - A Guide to Smooth Jazz on the Web Contact Us About Us Website Design by Visible Image, LLC