Eli Yamin is a high-energy straightahead piano player who is also an educator, consultant, DJ, and overall proselytizer for jazz. The first five tracks of this album could be a party record. They are all about having a hard-swinging good time.

The sixth track, “Rwandan Child,” opened by bassist Ari Roland, stops you cold. Elsewhere on You Can’t Buy Swing, Roland plays the arco bass solos he is known for, like dark wind through trees. But on “Rwandan Child” he is pizzicato, slow and sorrowful and ceremonial. Yamin plays a melody surprisingly lyrical but it becomes powerful left-hand chords of protest and right-hand tremolos that hang in the air like death knells. This was never meant to be a party record.

Yamin is also a clever thinker about Monk. “I Want to Be a Teacher” and “Well, You Better Not” freely reimagine “Let’s Cool One” and “Well, You Needn’t.” Yamin sublimates Monk’s jolts of deadpan discord into his own smoother style. Monk’s careening exuberance is not sublimated, but embraced. Besides, the band here is too strong for a party record. Is there anyone in jazz more consistently creative on more instruments than Chris Byars? His tenor saxophone solo on “Jacquet’s Meditation” is a remarkably complete improvised design that becomes increasingly convoluted and intense yet stays just above a whisper.
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Eli Yamin is a wonderful jazz pianist that composes truly original tunes. For me, his melodies are not only uniquely memorable but on many of these tracks they are haunting, for instance as heard on "Rwandan Child". I have Eli's other two CDs "Pushing Thirty" and "Solar: Suns of Cosmic Consciouness". Each album has a special place of its own in the jazz library. I was amazed by his reintroduction of "Waltz On The Hudson" in his latest album after hearing so often with Solar; Chris Byars' solo performance on flute is captivately on this tune. All the musicians on this album are accomplished and work tightly together as a group producing an albmum original, contemporary and classic.
Come see Eli and his ensemble perform; you'll enjoy a wonderful and uplifting evening.
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You Can't Buy Swing
Eli Yamin | Self Produced (2008)


By George Kanzler 	 

Pianist Eli Yamin is a communicator who believes jazz can foster a sense of community. His work is expansive and extroverted, populist in the best sense. As a teacher—he's now part of Jazz at Lincoln Center's education program—he's created jazz dramas and the dramatic impulse is a strong component of his music. So is swing. This album's title comes from a saying by a drummer who worked often with Yamin, the late Walter Perkins: "You can't buy swing, baby sweets. You can take the biggest name musicians and pay 'em a whole bunch of money and it's not necessarily going to swing." The rhythm section here—bassist Ari Roland and drummer Alvin Atkinson—definitely swings, benefiting from having recently made a State Department-sponsored foreign tour.

The opening track, "I Want To Be A Teacher," as well as "Well, You Better Not," derive from jazz dramas Yamin wrote during his tenure at Louis Armstrong Middle School. Both are contrafacts of Thelonious Monk tunes, "Let's Cool One" and "Well, You Needn't" respectively. They display Yamin's command of Monk devices and flourishes, delivered with exuberance. Chris Byars, who completes the quartet on all but two tracks, finds the Monk groove on soprano and alto saxophones. Alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin, who Yamin met when she was a student at LaGuardia High School, digs into the backbeat shuffle of the title tune and bright swirls of "Katiana's New Start."

In his impressive command of jazz piano traditions—referencing Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal or Abdullah Ibrahim as easily as Monk—Yamin is reminiscent of the late Jaki Byard, another expansive omnivore of jazz. On "Rwandian Child," a trio track with sax backgrounds at the heart of the album, Yamin builds a dramatically fulfilling performance, personalizing a full spectrum of jazz piano traditions.


Visit Eli Yamin on the web.


Track listing: I Want To Be A Teacher; You Can’t Buy Swing; Getting Somewhere; Well, You Better Not; Bop To Normal; Rwandan Child; Just One; Katiana’s New Start; Jacquet’s Meditation; Waltz On The Hudson; In Walked Barry.

Personnel: Chris Byars: saxophone, flute, conga; Lakecia Benjamin: saxophone; Ari Roland: bass; Alvin Atkinson: drums; Eli Yamin: piano.

Style: Mainstream/Bop/Hard Bop/Cool
Published: November 18, 2008
This article first appeared in All About Jazz: New York.
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I just bought some swing
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