NEAL ALGER

OLD SOULS

Calligram Records

Neal Alger, guitar/composer; Clark Sommers, acoustic bass; Dana Hall, drums/cymbals; Chris Madsen, tenor saxophone; Chad McCullough, trumpet/flugelhorn.

Neal Alger is an educator, (professor at Elmhurst College) a guitarist, a composer, and a lover of all genres of music.  From the oldest original tune on this recording, one that he wrote almost twenty years ago called “This is not a Test” to the more recent title tune “Old Souls,” Alger is excited about performing an album of entirely original compositions.

“I play a lot of other people’s music. I wanted to carve out a space to play my own music. I enjoy the process of writing, painstaking and frustrating at times, but ultimately fulfilling,” Neal Alger shared in his press package.

This is a return to a more Straight-ahead platform of originality and improvisational freedom. You hear his jazz roots on “This is Not a Test” that swings hard, and then his more ethereal-self appears on the title tune, with its Middle Eastern, minor-driven melody.  On Track #3, bassist Clark Sommers takes stage center, opening this song on his instrument and introducing a more smooth-jazz, contemporary tune. Neal has known Clark Sommers since the late 1990s.  He’s known drummer, Dana Hall that long too.  They are among the first-call bass and drum team around the Chicago, Illinois jazz scene and longtime friends of Alger.  Consequently, they make for a solid rhythm section when they join Alger’s guitar. The addition of Chad McCullough on trumpet and Chris Madsen on tenor sax create the quintet magic that Alger was striving for on this project. This album is an eclectic musical merry-go-round, that explores the compositions of Neal Alger, highlighting his varied arrangements like painted wooden horses bobbing up and down. As you listen, you are invited to take a creative ride with these mid-western musicians. Neal Alger is the ringmaster and leads the way with his busy guitar establishing the various moods and melodies.  On “Go with the Sco-Flow” the horn parts act like exclamation marks and punctuate the tune’s melodic arrangement.  When Alger adds “Moment Intro” as a segway solo guitar piece, I am intrigued.  I wish he had developed this into a longer composition.  This leads to “If Only For a Moment,” a song he wrote about the COVID pandemic that features a lovely tenor saxophone solo by Chris Madsen.

“Choro Delinquente” teases the listener with an almost Latin groove and “Dance of the Miscreants” is nine minutes of move and groove, with the sax and trumpet singing the melody in unison on top of the tight rhythm section.  When Alger’s guitar solo begins, he has a serious conversation with Hall’s drums.  They sound as if they are talking to each other, with Hall quite animated on his drums. Then McCullough’s trumpet talks to the Clark Sommers bass.  When Madsen parts the curtains with his tenor saxophone he is joined by Alger’s guitar as the two instruments meet and greet, holding court on top of the supportive rhythm of Hall and Sommers. When Hall battles his way into the spotlight, he shows off his percussive technique in an explosion of sticks and bravado.

Neal Alger offers us his original music and arrangements that celebrate his appreciation of the moments of rhythm, melody and magic that make up his life works.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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