JEN CHAPIN & STEVEN CRUMP: Open Wide (Purple Chair Music)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale - Cosmik.com
Jen Chapin and Steven Crump's evolution as a performing duo is the result of a happy accident. When they were the only members of her group to appear at a sound check, they forged ahead as best they could, and that turned out to be very, very good indeed. If voice and acoustic bass sound like an inadequate musical framework, you clearly haven't heard this remarkable duo in action. Open Wide provides an excellent remedy for that gap in your experience.
Crump is an accomplished jazz player, both as an accompanist and leader in his own right, and Chapin is a Berklee trained songwriter who combines an exceptional gift for lyric with an equally strong ability to forge distinctive melodies. While her music has earned the tag 'urban folk,' the sound achieved here is somewhere on the jazz side of the pop/jazz spectrum.
Chapin has taken a somewhat circuitous route to her music career, first having earned a degree in International Studies from Brown University, but she's been making up ground, performing and recording in a variety of settings in Europe and the US, writing curriculum for and teaching high school music classes and assembling a book of original material that would make her father very proud.
That's notable because her father was one of the finest songwriters to emerge in the crowded singer/songwriter era of the seventies, Harry Chapin. He'd be equally, if not more, proud that Jen Chapin is the Chairman of the Board of World Hunger Year, an orginazation that Harry Chapin co-founded and a cause that he devoted much of his too-short life to.
I don't want to diminish Crump's contribution - the entire concept of this album works largely because he's such an effective and evocative player, but the centerpieces here are Chapin's skill as a songwriter and her ability to deliver those songs against such an austere background with distinctive phrasing and a sweet & sour tone that conveys great emotional depth. Open Wide is a wonderful album and I'm wide open to hearing more from these wonderful artists in any setting.
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