Pianist Dave Catney had that spiritual thing, and you can hear it in his playing on Timelines.  Some quotes about Dave's music from jazz artists.... Trumpeter Steve Huffsteter: "To me he was just a sparkling phenomenon. There was a sparkle about him that you just don't see very often. It's that touch of genius that you recognize when you see it. Playing with Dave was one of the musical highlights of my life. I can't think of any piano player I've ever played with that I felt any better with, or that I liked any better. He was just right up there with the absolute best."
Singer Nancy King: "Talent-wise he was on the top of my list. I thought he was the answer to Bill Evans; I think he filled the shoes quite admirably. For me he did, and I was a friend of Bill Evans and knew him and played with him, and was honored to have him come and play the very last gig in this area with me just weeks before he died in 1980. So I don't say that loosely. 
Davey was like a total sponge for music. He had listened to everything and it came out there, at his fingertips, and it was total and complete. It covered everything. I mean he could play any style, any way he wanted. It just flowed out of him; it was the most natural thing in the world for him to play. Oh it was wonderful. And that's why I felt that he would have been heir apparent to Bill Evans and was one of the greatest accompanists I'd ever played with. EVER. And that is an art and a joy in itself, just being a great accompanist. There are many great piano players, but you can count--for my money--on your ten fingers the people in this world still alive who can accompany you who are also great players; who can play with you and bring out the very best in you, as you inspire them. He was one of them, and one of the main ones. It was always inspirational to play with him, always different, always fresh." 
Trumpeter Marvin Stamm: "Dave was such a sweet guy. He was just really a nice person and he was just so into the music. There was such a sincerity there; you couldn't mistake that. There wasn't any BS about any of it. So I think once you recognize that and you see that, you can't help but be impressed by someone's sincerity when it reaches that particular point like Dave's did. I think that's what drew the musicians who are, shall we say, on more of the national or international level to Dave. It was because of the fact that his sincerity was so right out there. There just wasn't any question about it." 
Drummer Peter Erskine: "The entire recording definitely has a "tone" to it. Not a lot of pianists or musicians have that either, a certain tone or voice; a presence really." 
Drummer Ed Soph: "His talent was monstrous. A great thing about playing with David; you could throw anything at him and he loved it. The more off the wall, the more outlandish--but not in an unmusical way--but rhythmic, polyrhythmic stuff, he loved that. That was part of the fun of playing with him. He never put any restrictions on you, and it was one of those rare occasions where you could play someone else's music and you felt completely secure in playing someone else's music your way, knowing that's what that person wanted! I guess that's why he hired the people he hired, why he hired Peter Erskine for the second album; Peter was going to go in and play the music his way. And this goes back to what I said about Dave being so secure in what he did. So you could have an absolute ball with him. No holds barred. That was a quality I had encountered with the best people I had worked with before, the Joe Henderson's and Gary Burton's and Bill Evans's. David had that same quality, and that's what his greatness came from musically, as far as I'm concerned: he was open for any suggestions on the bandstand. He was not intimidated. And this goes along with the fact that he was such an egoless person." 
Vibraphonist Harry Sheppard: "I never met him that I didn't hug him for a full minute. And everybody else was the same way. People just loved this man so much. He had a twinkle in his eyes when he'd look at you. A warm smile, a twinkle in his eye; it was just a loving thing. You'd think Jesus Christ was standing in front of you! He had some kind of charisma that was just wonderful. He was a very special human being."
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This is my first exposure to Darrel Tidaback's music.  As a Bill Evans fan, the music spoke to me on many levels. Even though it was recorded in 1994, it sounded like it could have been fresh from a studio today. I loved the interplay between the musicians, and was saddened to learn of Dave Catney's fatal illness.  Some very nice material, but the bass was mixed too much "in front" for my taste. And the first cut "Bossa Tres" was inexplicably faded out mid-song.  Strange.
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Bassist Milt Hinton on Dave Catney, from his May 1995 Catney interview,  “It was a great pleasure and honor for me to play with David Catney because I found him to be so tremendously talented. I hadn't really heard too much about him before I got to Houston, but it was such a great honor for me. When I sat in and played with him I just couldn't believe the sensitivity he had. He and I played a couple of tunes together, and I was just flabbergasted at his ability. The remarkable part about it was he allowed me to play anything I wanted to play. He said, "Whatever you want to play, Milt..." So I suggested we do My One and Only Love, a ballad, where we could both show our sensitivity, and he was just amazing. I don't know how to explain it to you except that I was just amazed to find a piano player there that was that much of an artist. He was not just a pianist. He was an artist.”
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Pianist Dave Catney was a brilliant, courageous, exceptional talent with a creative genius perhaps secondary to no pianist since the seminal Bill Evans.  But he's not simply another exceptional player: his music assimilates the  jazz tradition while simultaneously inserting itself within that very same tradition--an authentic "time line"--and contributing to its evolving, progressive, ceaseless invention and reinvention of itself.  From one of the works inarguably representative of Ellington's special genius ("Star-Crossed Lovers" from "Such Sweet Lightning") to songs from the Great American Songbook (Cole Porter's "Just One of Those Things") to his own "First Flight," Catney represents the tradition and its possibilities, stopping short of the "free jazz" still being embraced by many throughout the world of music, though of necessity representing neither a tradition nor lasting art.  By contrast Catney's was a moment miraculously created within the timeline of Ellington and Bill Evans and now, thanks to its reclamation on this wondrous disc, offered as an epiphany (James Joyce's term for the special, revelatory moments in time captured by art that is paradoxically "timeless") for all who have ears to hear.  

Many pianists have tried to follow in the path of Bill Evans even as they denied his influence on them--primarily as a means of avoiding comparisons unflattering to their own playing.  Catney is one of the very few musicians who can afford to welcome such comparisons, inviting the listener to speculate on where the music would have gone had he lived longer. But the pianist is also extremely "democratic" in his distribution of solos on each of the tracks: both bassist Darrel Tidaback (who contributes all of the original tunes save one) and drummer Joe Ferreira (frequently playing his hi-hat not merely on the off-beats but on every beat of an uptempo number in 4/4 or 3/4!)  make the most of each opportunity (Tidaback's bass-lines during drum solos amount to a happy inspiration) even as they contribute to a group dynamic that's normally reserved for veteran jazz giants who have played together--nightly, and sometimes over the course of several decades. 

The telepathic tightness of the group even amid these lyrical flights of the imagination are no doubt testimony to the inspirational playing and leadership of Catney. But make no mistake about it: this is challenging music--admittedly the original tunes initially sound quite similar and may not immediately command attention--but the listener who stays with each of the performances on the program will be rewarded on the level of the very best of Bill Evans' or Keith Jarrett's trio albums.  In short, this obscure album is the priceless gold needle in the haystack--an opportunity not to be missed, and an epiphany that does for 20th-century music what Joyce's epiphanies did for literature.
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