Alex Skolnick Trio

PREVIEWS AND REVIEWS

By Steve Chess
The Weekly Recorder
March 14, 2008

By Steve Chess

Gradually building a reputation for bringing obscure (and sometimes obtuse), musician’s musicians to Southwestern Pennsylvania, promoter/journalist Manny Thiener has done it once again. The venue was the hip and stylish, Club Café on Pittsburgh’s South Side. The musicians were the Alex Skolnick Trio.

Skolnick, perhaps most visible these days as a seminal member and primary guitarist for the Trans Siberian Orchestra, began his career at the age of 16 with the Thrash Metal band, Testament. Even back then, he was noted for his prodigious technical skills and creative approach to the music. After a bit less than a decade with Testament, his creative bent led him onto various interesting and a few (some might say) peculiar projects and ultimately, to study Jazz at the The New School in New York City.

As would any Jazzman worth his salt, Skolnick(now approaching 40) uses the musical sensibilities of his vast portfolio as grist for his improvisational mill. I do believe that he is an authentic Jazzman. There have been several rockers that have come to Jazz later in life, that just don’t seem to deliver when performing live. As the standing room only (and precious little of that) audience at the Sunday night concert can attest, The Alex Skolnick Trio does deliver.

Tall, lanky and unassuming, Skolnick, his drummer (Matt Zebroski) and bassist (Nathan Peck) took the tiny stage and set about their evenings work. It just so happens that Zebroski and Peck are “local boys.” Matt Zebroski Is from Peters Township, Washington County and Nathan Peck is from a West Virginia based, Jazz family and has played with some of the finest Jazz musicians in and passing through Pittsburgh and New York City. The Trio’s set didn’t consist of the usual catalog of Jazz standards that one might expect to hear performed by a similarly assembled group. As with any cutting edge Jazz ensemble, there were a significant number of original compositions performed, but as the title of their debut album (“Goodbye To Romance: Standards for a new Generation”) implies, this band will not follow the usual guidelines for what is appropriate fare for Jazz interpretation. Songs by the artists Kiss, Judas Priest, Ozzie Osbourne and Rush found their way into a set that displayed such a degree of rhythmic and harmonic sophistication as to cause musicians in the audience (and there were many) to cheer spontaneously and shake their heads in disbelief. The combination of creative interpretation and musicianship would have caused the original artists (of the songs covered) to be nothing, but flattered with the treatment of their material. The band Rush’s hit, “Tom Sawyer” began in an indecipherable direction, but a few bars in, one could recognize the unmistakable melodic theme most closely associated with that song. The members of Rush, no strangers to technical sophistication themselves, would probably have been among the musicians cheering.

The original compositions were of equal quality. “Mecury Retrograde,” from the new “Last Day In Paradise” CD had the proper ethereal feel to fit the title describing an astrological event. The accompanying wordless chanting added to the mood of the song.

The title track from the same CD (“Last Day In Paradise”) had a soulful, poignant feel, as one might expect from a song of that title. Nathan Peck’s bowing of his upright bass added to the overall atmosphere created by the song. The encore of “Western Sabbath Stomp” featured Skolnick’s slide guitar playing. The slide playing wasn’t quite to the level of Derek Trucks (Allman Brothers Band), but it was respectable and the Alex Skolnick Trio finally left the stage with the audience screaming for still more.