Getting a handle on George Colligan isn’t an easy task. Best known as an acclaimed pianist and composer who’s played on more than 150 albums with an array of jazz legends and mid-career masters, he’s also a trumpeter, educator, bandleader, and drummer. His multifarious creative activities add up to a dauntingly complex portrait, but his new album King’s Dream distills his expressive power with elegant and instantly approachable concision. A solo piano session conceived and recorded in the midst of the pandemic, King’s Dream is inviting but introspective, a musical reflection on trying times that offers the succor of beauty without flinching from hard questions.
Recorded at engineer and fellow ace pianist Randy Porter’s Heavywood Studio, the home of a superlative Steinway Concert Grand, the project was a direct response to the anxiety, isolation, and political ferment of 2020. “It was and still is such an unusual time,” Colligan says. “Who knows what tomorrow brings? The music is a representation of that uncertainty. I’ve done a lot of different stuff over my career— singer/songwriter sessions, organ, drums—and I wanted to get back to basics a little bit. This is an album dealing with my own compositions.”
