Live Jazz: The Carol Robbins Sextet Upstairs at Vitello’s By Don Heckman. September 24, 2012 Among the many instruments listed in jazz polls as “miscellaneous,” the harp is surely one of the most rare participants. As unlikely an actual jazz voice as it may seem, … Read more
Opening with a unique recasting of Bill Evans’ “Waltz For Debby” (featuring rich, articulate soloing from harpist Robbins), the program proceeded to include such idiosyncratically titled Childs compositions as “Man Chasing the Horizon,” “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “Hope, in the Face of Despair” as well as a work commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival and another unique arrangement, this time of the traditional English ballad, “Scarborough Faire.”
Live at Ronnie Scott’s London. Very unique in this line-up is the harp. Although ‘unique’ might not be the right term, because the harp takes to Child’s musical vocabulary like a duck to water. Childs’ compositional style is to be described as contemporary impressionism. Will Friedwald from Wall Street Journal rightfully stated: ‘It’s impossible to tell where the jazz ends and the classical music begins’. It is jazz and improvisation but it is also composed music, both styles in free interchange to each other.