Gerard Presencer - The Optimist (2000) [Reissue 2001] SACD ISO + DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

This album from the UK's most exciting and innovative jazz trumpeter/composer and his band effortlessly epitomizes retro-cool. Though still only in his twenties, Gerard Presencer has performed as a soloist with some of the biggest names in pop and jazz, including Sting, James Brown, Chick Corea and The Brand New Heavies, and he has recorded five albums and toured worldwide with the Charlie Watts Quintet and John Parricelli. The Optimist is Gerard's follow up to Platypus, hailed by The Observer as "a brilliant debut". This album shows why he was voted best trumpeter at the British Jazz Awards in 1995, 1997 and 1999.

This is the closest thing to a 'hit jazz' album I've heard since my other favourite recent contender, Wallace Roney's exceptional No Room for Argument - oh, yes, and that one's been summarily dispatched to the wastebin, too, by some. For all it's implied 'simplicity', The Optimist is an album that grows outwards and upwards, the more you listen to it. All this tosh about G Presencer 'squandering' his talent on 'bland jazz fusion' is an extraordinary accusation and an insult to one of this country's most creative and forward-thinking players.

This album is the greatly anticipated follow-up to Presencer's exquisite debut Platypus album and that was a killer. Why shouldn't a musician who's respected in so-called 'straight jazz' circles tale his music into a new direction if the mood and the moment take him? Especially when he does it as rewardingly as this.

The Optimist gives Presencer an opportunity to explore some similar musical areas to Truffaz, with its brilliant incorporation of drum 'n bass programming. And above all, notably on tracks such as the unashamedly funky 'The Optimist' (with its Freddie Hubbard-ish overtones) and the compulsive groover 'Patchy Sunshine', Presencer's honey-edged flugelhorn notes swirl and sway in a downright pleasing way.

Tracklist:

01. Blah De Blah
02. Dr Jekyll
03. Nothing Changes
04. The Optimist
05. And If I Told You
06. Patchy Sunshine
07. Countdown

Personnel
Gerard Presencer - flugelhorn, trumpet
Jacqueline Dankworth - vocals
Jim Watson - Fender Rhodes
Graham Harvey - piano
Heavy Horns - brass
John Parricelli - guitar
Orlando Le Fleming - bass
Laurence Cottle - bass
Jeremy Brown - bass
Jeremy Stacey - drums, programming, percussion
Miles Bould - percussion

Produced by Jeremy Stacey. Mixed by Calum Malcolm.
Tracks 1-4, 6 & 7 Recorded at Stepping Stone Studios, London, in 1999
Track 5 Recorded at R.G. Jones Studios.
DSD Mixing & Mastering. LINN Records # AKD 166


Thanks to jazzyman!
Uncompressed SACD ISO size > 2,00 GB
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