Undertow

NA1063

Virg Dzurinko, piano
Ryan Messina, trumpet

1. There Will Never Be Another You
2. Buttermilk 1
3. Semi-Subconscious-Lee
4. Lover Man
5. St. Elmo’s Fire
6. Out of Nowhere
7. Moby Dick
8. All the Things You Are
9. Confluence
10. The Nearness of You
11. Reconcilable Differences
12. You Stepped Out of a Dream
13. Red Sky
14. The Nearness of You (alternate take)

Recorded September 24 & December 2, 2015, Tedesco Studios, Paramus NJ

BIO: VIRG DZURINKO

REVIEWS

On her latest album, the profoundly satisfying Undertow, Virg Dzurinko pairs up with the astonishing trumpeter Ryan Messina to spontaneously improvise on seven standards, plus an alternate take on one of them, and six originals [free improvisations].

Dzurinko and Messina’s freewheeling conversation ranges from the sublimely lyrical to the viscerally Rabelaisian, and it addresses everything from the tenderest of feelings on tracks such as “Out of Nowhere” to the most outrageous aggravation, in a deeply humorous way, on “St. Elmo’s Fire.” The playing is intense and relaxed at once, completely un-self-conscious. They connect on some pre-rational plane that must be terrific fun to play on. Their absolute command of the full range of their instruments’ capabilities allows them to reach into the deepest interstices of human feeling, exciting wonder, surprise, laughter, and contemplation. (Messina’s trumpet is a funhouse of sound.)

Undertow pulled me completely under the spell of these two musicians.
—Mel Minter, Musically Speaking, May 2016