www.myspace.com/donalfoxprojects
Donal Fox
Composer - Pianist
DONAL FOX: INVENTIONS IN BLUE
A resident of Boston, Donal Fox is of Judeo-Panamanian background which accounts, no doubt, for his knowledge of classical music as well as Black American music. His music is unlike that of anyone else, while at the same time it evokes McCoy Tyner, Art Tatum, the intensity of Coltrane and of the blues, shades of Bach and Cuban music. In other words, his compositions have an inherent solidity, not like music which fluctuates to fit current fashions.x In some ways Donal Fox shows similarities with Marcus Roberts with whom he shares a taste for atmospherics and the blues. But what is extraordinary is Fox's mastery of stylistic digressions, moving from the classics to the blues, from free form to the tango, with a power and logic strongly reminiscent of Art Tatum.
The modernity of his music rests on the vitality and multiplicity of its roots, whose springs are always fresh. The expressiveness of stride resounding throughout, its musical richness mirroring the richness of all humanity. While some composers act audacious while regurgitating old goods, Fox makes us see the logic of unusual juxtapositions. He moves from incantation and rhythmic violence to playing a fluid free-form and giving us every variation, without the variations being the sole subject of his music. This is the royal road of jazz: invention, borrowing, the personality, curiosity and strength of an unchanging identity without artifice.
Fox has chosen musical partners who possess the same freedom, the same ease in passing from "inside" to "outside," from swing to a luminous free form. Yoron Israel reacts instinctively to the most subtle request, and John Lockwood overflows with contrapuntal ideas.
The tango ("tango" is in fact a Cuban bolero) is particularly well adapted to the personality of Donal Fox, since classical inspiration is wedded to a rhythmic sense.a synthesis parallel to that occurring on jazz. Fox easily weaves a whole from a variety of historical threads (listen to his "Bach's Soul Food" and "Bach Goes to New Orleans").
Invention in Blue: the title says it all. Fox develops his inventions based on the complex texture of the blues -- that brilliant emblem of the civilization of jazz.
Jean Szlamowicz
Jazz Hot Magazine (France)
January 2003