ELLIE LEE

ESCAPE

Independent Label

Ellie Lee, piano/composer/arranger: Steve Wilson, saxophone; Steve LaSpina, bass; Jongkuk Kim, drums.

Ellie Lee is a pianist, composer and arranger who offers us seven original compositions on this album of eight tunes.  The quartet opens with her title tune,”Escape.”  Lee sets the mood and tempo on piano, until Steve Wilson enters on his saxophone.  Then Wilson sings the melody she has written and soon flies off into space, improvising freely on the theme.  This is contemporary jazz, rooted securely in Lee’s classical training.  On “Beyond the Blue” we hear a little bit of Coltrane’s influence in the arrangement.  This song has a lovely melody and a piano line that establishes the groove, leaning heavily towards the jazz of the 1960s.

This talented pianist grew up in Seoul, South Korea.  She earned a Bachelor of Music in Classical Piano Performance from Sookmyung Women’s University.  However, Ellie Lee desired more freedom in her music and discovered that jazz offered that opportunity. A scholarship to Boston’s Berklee College of Music offered her a new and exciting direction. She studied with jazz masters like Joanne Brackeen, Alain Mallet, Tim Ray and George W. Russell, Jr., earning a Master of Music in Jazz Performance degree from William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.  It was at that University that she raised the eyebrows of several professional professors and musicians with her fresh, contemporary jazz compositions.  Ellie Lee is a very talented composer.

On this project, Lee seems somewhat shy about soaking up the spotlight.  She generously shares the solo spot with Steve Wilson on saxophone.  I find her original compositions to be quite beautiful.  Her classical training infuses the songs, and I feel she finally finds her niche on her Latin arrangement of “Melrose Breeze.”  On this original song she sounds quite relaxed and establishes the groove at the introduction, then finds freedom during her own solo presentation.  Although Ellie Lee is a very astute improviser, what seems missing is her ability to ‘swing’ or to fully give herself to the music and become part of the groove.  I think that will come with time and performance experience.  Surely there is nothing wrong with her current agility at the piano keys, and she has the technique to play just about anything. I enjoyed her arrangement of Benny Golson’s composition “Whisper Not,” the only standard jazz song that the quartet covered.  Lee says she chose jazz because it offers her freedom and exploration of her composing and piano-playing mindset.  However, freedom often comes with the ability to let go.  It’s a matter of (as Janis Joplin said) nothing left to lose.  I think the talented Ms. Lee is right on the brink of flying off that cliff without a parachute.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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