Album Review: Midnight Sun from Bryan Lubeck

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Album:  Midnight Sun
Artist:  Bryan Lubeck
Label:  Vineyard Music Productions
Website:  www.bryanlubeck.com

Midnight Sun is the follow up to bandleader, composer and multi-instrumentalist Bryan Lubeck’s recording Tuscan Sky, featuring a potpourri of musicians who each infuse shards of elegance into the tracks. A confluence of scripted phrases and spontaneous flights, the release demonstrates Lubeck's keen sensibilities as a smooth jazz artist.

Best known for injecting a flamenco tint into his music, Lubeck works with a diverse palette that acts as a elixir on the senses.  "If You Only Knew" is trellised in bopping grooves surrounded by fluttering horns and caressing guitar riffs, moving into the title track's succor-rich swells.  The storytelling phrasing of Lubeck's guitar chords ruminates gently across "Sun Dress," immersing the listener in a beachside landscape.

Lubeck's meanderings on the guitar emblazon "Till I'm Found" with a refined voicing that is spellbinding, inlaid by a string arrangement of floating silhouettes conducted by Ryan Herma.  "Alex Arrives" moves the recording forward with a folksy pop tint that turns into waves of breathy wisps in Lubeck's guitar chords stroking across "Adirondack." His playing is mesmerizing, engulfing the listener in warm bliss.

Lubeck's fusion of musical influences from jazz, folk, flamenco, and pop make for a pleasurable escape.  Recorded at Soundmind Studios in Chicago, Lubeck puts together a mesmerizing tapestry of scripted phrases and spontaneous flights that  demonstrate Lubeck's keen sensibilities as a smooth jazz artist.

Musicians:
String Arrangements: Erik Rumsa, Ryan Herma and Rich Rankin
Live Horn Arrangements: Kirk Garrison
Bryan Lubeck - lead guitar, piano, synthesizers, flute
Bob Garrett - percussion
Christian Dillingham  - upright bass
Dave Hiltebrand - guitar
Erik Rumsa - violins
Felton Offard - guitar
John Erickson - synthesizers
Jon Paul - bass
Jonathan Marks - drums
Katherine Hughes - violins
Kirk Garrison - trumpet and flugelhorn
Matthew Agnew - cello
Neil Artwick - piano and Rhodes Fender
Nick Bisesi - flute and saxophone
Rich Stitzel - percussion
Richard Gibbs Jr - B3 organ
Ryan Herma - synthesizers, drum machine, guitar, and bass


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