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Hot Ticket: Live in Boston *

Matt Savage
1 disc

1. Muy Caliente
2. Father's Day
3. Setting Sun
4. Quittin' Time
5. Black-Key Magic
6. Awful Song, An
7. El Fuego
8. 6/4/ Song, A (That's Also in 6/4)
9. Colors
10. Seven Steps to Heaven
11. Curacao
12. Free and Easy
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Additional Info

Manufacturer Part Number (MPN): 0008
Credits

Producer
Engineer
In the jazz world, underage musicians that publicists and A&R people have tried to market as "child prodigies" have often failed to live up to the excessive hype that surrounded them. GRP certainly didn't do Amani A.W. Murray any favor when, back in 1991, they acted like the saxophonist (who was in his early teens at the time) was the reincarnation of Charlie Parker; Murray, although not without talent, wasn't ready for prime time -- and GRP should have known better. But Matt Savage is an example of a "child prodigy" who really did show tremendous potential at a very young age. Recorded at Tufts University in September 2007, Hot Ticket: Live in Boston finds Savage (who turned 15 that year) sounding like an improviser who could easily be ten years older. Savage never sounds like he hasn't spent enough time in the shed; he clearly knows what he is doing during this Boston appearance -- not only as a hard bop/post-bop pianist, but also as a composer. Except for Miles Davis and Victor Feldman's "Seven Steps to Heaven," everything on this 65-minute, 12-track CD is a Savage original -- and that includes the exuberant, Latin-flavored "Muy Caliente" as well as more introspective and lyrical offerings such as "Setting Sun," "Colors," and "An Awful Song" (which isn't awful at all -- Savage was being ironic when he came up with that title). Chuck D and Public Enemy knew exactly what they were talking about when they cautioned listeners not to buy into bloated, exaggerated hype, but Hot Ticket demonstrates that Savage really was quite capable of playing straight-ahead jazz authoritatively at 15. ~ Alex Henderson
Critic Reviews

JazzTimes (p.137) - "'Father's Day' is an example of why we should all keep the faith regarding Matt Savage...It modulates into dissonance, then double-clutches into half-time, then flies off again and blows up the blues in pummeling chords and jagged clusters..."