SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: ALISON SHEARER – VIEW FROM ABOVE

ALISON SHEARER
VIEW FROM ABOVE
INDEPENDENT

What exactly would be a perfect genre fit? Don’t worry, even the people that make up genre definitions would have a hard time telling you. Actually, there probably isn’t such a thing, no matter how many ‘true’ elements you can pick up within the music of a certain artist that you can slap a genre on.

A case in point, View From Above, the debut album by New York saxophonist Alison Shearer. Sure, it has jazz splashed all over it, but then, what is jazz these days and how many other musical elements from other musical genres can it include?

If you take even a cursory listen to Shearer’s album that answer would be as many as you can without losing that main jazz trait. Oh, and still make it a listening favorite for those listeners who thought jazz is not for them.

Take for instance “Big Kids,” Shearer’s centerpiece here, devoted to her late father John Shearer, famed photographer renowned for his civil rights movement photographs. It includes everything – from Shearer’s jazz/soul solo to a gospel chorus to a Chopin inspired piano solo.

Yet, Shearer doesn’t stop there, from soul-inspired “Toni’s Tune” and its spoken word monologue to balladry of “Purple Flowers.” Essentially, a jazz album even for those who don’t think that jazz is their thing.

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