Dan Siegel - Indigo (2014)

As a veteran purveyor of smooth, moody and sophisticated contemporary jazz, composer/keyboardist Dan Siegel is an artist known for instrumental music of high taste and quality. Yet after a five-year hiatus from recording, he has just created what is easily the most inspired and meticulously-crafted collection of his career with his milestone 20th project, Indigo.

Thirty-plus years past his 1980 debut LP, Nite Ride, Siegel quietly removed himself from the rat race of the recording industry, submerged himself into his enlarged role as a music educator and gently massaged his creative musical muse with a non-rushed approach to composing and orchestrating his latest creations that are audibly superior in every dimension. "It takes time and a vision that you can't force to make quality music," Siegel states. I'm the slowest guy in the world when it comes to writing. I'll come up with 80 percent of a song in two hours then take a month to complete it working out every detail, refining and distilling an idea until I'm happy with it. There was no record company deadline pressure on me this time; all of the pressure came from within. It took me three years to be satisfied with the material, but the result is a worthy documentation of where I am as an artist today."