Victor Provost - Bright Eyes (2017) [Hi-Res]

Beginning a new chapter in life can lead to unexpected opportunities. Steel pan master Victor Provost has met each new phase in his life with enthusiasm and an effort to use the momentum of change to spur his creative forces. It was while expecting his first child s birth that he funneled his nervous excitement into composing and recording his new album, Bright Eyes.

Growing up on the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands, Provost was introduced to music early, first by his guitar and piano playing father, who had played as an amateur in New England and New York City and who, with his wife, had moved to rural St. John in the 1960s. Provost began on piano, taking lessons when he was 9 years old. It was about this time that he discovered what would soon be his real musical voice, the steel pan.

Naturally, Provost had studied the work of other improvising pan players, including Narell and Othello Molineaux. His own style had stemmed from the language of bebop and modern jazz, so he chose to stop listening to pan players for reference. Provost s feeling was: An instrument is an instrument, you have to make it do something. Like pan pioneer and band director Rudy Wells, who left the Virgin Islands to study with Milt Jackson at Berklee, Provost began to follow vibists, including Jackson and Dave Samuels, but continued to keep a varied listening diet including saxophonists and trumpeters, all the while attempting to emulate their idiosyncrasies on his own instrument.

For Bright Eyes, Provost wanted to assemble musicians he felt would be able to balance the influences of jazz and Caribbean music. He called on his friend Alex Brown to take the piano chair. He also enlisted Alex s brother Zach, a remarkable bassist who has been in New York for a number of years playing with the likes of Terri Lyne Carrington and D Rivera. The Norfolk, Virginia based drummer Billy Williams, Jr. was a perfect choice, as he could bring his swinging sensibility to anything thrown at him. The simpatico quartet was quick to become a cohesive unit because of their combined histories playing together, the Brown brothers over a lifetime and all three with heralded vibraphonist, Warren Wolf.

Just prior to his daughter s birth in 2014, Provost found himself inspired by his impending life change. This kick started his writing a program of compositions that span a wide spectrum of influences from contemporary jazz to R&B and Caribbean music to swing.