Pianist Ellen Rowe is undergraduate jazz coordinator and teacher of piano at the University of Michigan. For her first album, she has chosen to go mostly with her own writings mixed in with three classic pop and one jazz standard. Recorded over a period starting in 1996 and ending in December of 2000, the album shows Rowe as pretty much a quiet, soft player who still inserts subtle dynamics and different shades of color in her playing. The earliest recorded track on the CD, Hymn has vestiges of classical music, emphasizing the interchange between piano and John Clayton's bass. This pattern is carried on -- this time with Paul Keller doing the bass -- on the title tune, Sylvan Way, whose name predicts the idyllic impressions created by this piece. The passion in the pianism becomes somewhat less "sylvan" with a medium-tempo Love Is Here to Stay, with a nice bit of improvising after the statement of the melody. Here she displays influences of Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson. Keller takes two choruses, rising above the melody line with the drums of Pete Siers coming in on the breaks. A fine track, indeed. Once again emulating Evans, who also had an affinity for Erik Satie, her Reminiscence evokes the French composer's Gymnopédie No. 3. In contrast, the presence of Andrew Bishop's soprano sax on The Phoenix comes close to pushing this tune into the stream-of-consciousness, insipid smooth jazz genre. It's only the dynamics of Rowe's piano that saves this track from complete banality. But aside from this track, the album is a superb statement of the work of a sensitive, refined keyboard artist, who hopefully will have more to say in future releases. ~ Dave Nathan, Rovi

1		Visa Blues
2		Sylvan Way
3		Funk in Deep Freeze
4		The Shadow of Your Smile
5		Love Is Here to Stay
6		The Phoenix
7		Hymn
8		It Could Happen to You
9		Reminiscence

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