Mike Pope - The Parts You Keep (2025) [Hi-Res]

Mike Pope is a real Renaissance Man. He is a musician of broad scope and tremendous talent. His virtuosity on electric and acoustic bass is rare even by today's standards.
John Patitucci

Bassist, composer, and recording engineer Mike Pope taps into the music and musicians who represent several pivotal life phases over his striking 30-year career, as well as from broad positions in the great timeline of jazz. From trumpeter Randy Brecker, a foundational figure in modern jazz, to saxophonist Roxy Coss, a brilliant leader representing the next guard, to the young guitarist Amaury Cabral who Pope heard at Berklee, they join Pope contemporaries, pianist Geoffrey Keezer and drummer Nate Smith, for a vivid set of originals, along with modern arrangements of music from Bird and Coltrane. Of note, Pope traveled to Atlanta to record his 85-year-old mother, an accomplished classical pianist, as a centerpiece of the closing track "The Parts You Keep." Imagined as a reminiscence of his youth when he'd wake up to his mother practicing, Pope inserts her performance into the piece, wrapping up the album with her solo rendition of the Ernst von Dohnányi piece it was derived from.

Performers:
Geoffrey Keezer - piano, Fender Rhodes
Mike Pope - bass
Nate Smith - drums
Randy Brecker - trumpet & flugelhorn (5,7)
Roxy Coss - tenor & soprano saxophone (2,3,6,8)
Amaury Cabral - guitar (2,6,7,8)
Ann Almond Pope - classical piano (8,9)
Yu-Ting Wu - violin 1 (5,7)
Jennifer Houck - violin 2 (5,7)
Ivan Mendoza - viola (5,7)
Peter Kibbe - violoncello (5,7)

Tracklist:
1 Misgivings
2 Steeplechase
3 Giant Steps
4 Dashan's Flying Ubercar
5 That Old Feeling
6 Barolo Blue
7 Past is Prologue
8 The Parts You Keep
9 Sphärenmusik from Winterreigen, Opus 13 No. 5