Although
Larry Goldings is best known for his organ playing, he is also a skillful acoustic pianist.
Goldings played more acoustic piano than organ on his 2005 recording
Quartet, and on
In My Room, he plays unaccompanied solo piano and does so not in an actual recording studio, but in his own home (where Richard Bryce Goodman, the album's producer/engineer, documents
Goldings using portable recording equipment).
Goldings has not been the type of jazz musician who favors an all-warhorses-all-the-time policy; he has a much more interesting and far-reaching repertoire than the jazzmen who go out of their way to avoid anything that isn't an overdone standard. In fact, this 2010/2011 recording is all over the place when it comes to material. During the course of the album,
Goldings brings his acoustic pianism to intimate performances of everything from
Matt Dennis' "Everything Happens to Me" and
the Beach Boys' "In My Room," to
Joni Mitchell's "All I Want,"
the Zombies' "A Rose for Emily," and
the Beatles' "Here, There and Everywhere."
Goldings also finds inspiration in Charles Strouse's "Maybe" (from the musical Annie) as well as the American baseball anthem "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"; on top of that, he offers several original pieces and interprets "The Wedding" by South African jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, aka
Dollar Brand. So in terms of material, one certainly can't accuse
Goldings of playing it safe on
In My Room, which is anything but an album of warhorses. It is also a consistently engrossing example of what
Goldings can accomplish when he puts his organ aside and performs unaccompanied on the acoustic piano. ~ Alex Henderson