SLAMCD260 Vladimir Miller & Steve Plews – What Haven’t You Had?

Some of the music in this series of duets and solo performances by the pianists Vladimir Miller and Steve Plews, is scored but much of it is improvised; the artists acknowledge influences of Bartok, Rachmaninov, Keith Tippett, Jaki Byard amongst others.

The result is a fascinating collection of post-modern romanticism at once Lennox Berkeley and Bill Evans.

The recordings, made in front of a live audience, capture the atmosphere of a memorable performance.

With the percussive intricacy of Millers style warmly enveloped by the rhapsodic technique of Plews, the music varies from quiet introspection to a tour de force of compositional and improvisational virtuosity.

Vladimir Miller, Steve Plews: piano

“A highly listenable hour plus long recital of 20th Century Piano Musics. Although there is a stylistic coherence across the record, Miller emerges as a highly percussive player who is also capable of great detail and intricacy; while Steve Plews’ playing has an underlying romanticism and has a more rhapsodic quality. It would be interesting to hear what other listeners glimpse across the 12 sides, because there seems to be frequent near quotes from, for instance, Messiaen and Ravel in the duo’s ‘Below Profile’; near snatches from Debussy’s ‘Children’s Corner’ Suite in Miller’s solo ‘Counterpoint for a Count’ where his classicism is much more apparent; and the solo Plews’ ‘Praelude’ has some of the quietude of Bill Evans and the elegiac qualities to be found in the Composed work of Arnold Bax and Lennox Berkeley…Well worth investigating.” – Mike Hodges, Jazz Views

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