Jazz Tales With The Young Brothers
Bruce Von Stiers
Alphonso M. Young, Jr. is an accomplished jazz drummer. For more than 18 years, Alphonso has played with top named performers like Randy Becker and Jon Secada. Currently teaching in both public school and at the collegiate level, Alphonso also finds time to be the drummer for both the Eric Byrd Trio and the Robert Larson Trio.
Now Alphonso has gotten two other musicians together to form The Young Brothers Trio. The trio has recorded a really good album that is called Tales of Time.
There are nine songs on the album. Six of the songs are classics, while the other three are original tunes.
Joining Alphonso is his brother, Tim Young. Tim is the pianist for the Army Jazz Ambassadors in Washington, D.C. He has played with Doc Cheatam, Ben Vereen, Slide Hampton and Rebecca Parris. The third member of the Young Brothers Trio is Bhagwan Khalsa. Bhagwan plays the acoustic bass and has performed with the likes of Cecil Payne, Howard Burns and Sonny Fortune.
The first song is a Kurt Weil / Ogden Nash tune called Speak Low. Great piano makes this a winner of a song.
Helping the trio out, Ben Baker plays tenor sax on one of the songs. Todd Harrison is on guitar and percussion on one of the songs. And Sara Jones provides vocals on two of the songs.
The second song is an original written by Tim Young. This is a piano based tune called Waltz For Nanami. The song is soft and gentle.
Then the trio does a rather good rendition of Duke Ellington's Just Squeeze Me (But Don't Tease Me).
From there, the listener is treated to a slow and easy Benny Carter tune, Souvenir.
Ben Baker is superb on I Can't Give You Anything But Love. The drums by Alphonso are light and easy.
Sara Jones has a wonderful voice. She shows it here on Tim's original song, Somewhere Within. Even though the lyrics are only “la la da la”, Sara does them with a velvet embrace. Todd Harrison is also wonderful on guitar here.
The seventh song is a decent piano laden piece by Gene Thorne called Next Chapter. The bass is extremely well done here as is the drums.
Nahjal is yet another Tim Young song. Strong on bass and piano, this is a fairly slow piece.
The last song on the album is the terrific Hoagy Carmichael tune, Skylark. Sara makes this classic song well worth listening to.
Tales of Time showcases the great talents of both the Young brothers and Khalsa. Adding in great guitar and sax music along with velvety vocals make this an exceptional jazz album.
You can learn how to get a copy of this great album at www.youngbrothersjazz.com
© 2007 Bruce E Von Stiers