We know that Tobin Mueller is someone adept at wandering all over the musical map, able to hop the genre fences of whatever sound and style takes his fancy and make it his own. But with his latest album, Blue Side Vol 1, he returns to the territory that he is, perhaps, most closely associated with…jazz.
Essentially an adventure through all manner of jazz styles, Blue Side is a collaboration with Argentine saxophonist Tomás Martinez, who had worked with Mueller on 2025’s Fragments album but who then became his neighbour in New York City. It takes the form of a set of original songs, based around their piano and saxophone duets, and occasionally becomes a trio, both through Mueller’s own bass lines being layered in and additional percussion, and, for one track only, the tenor saxophone backing of Juan Torres Fernández.
The album kicks off with the one full-band experience, “Let Me Play,” a joyous and adventurous example of Impressionistic Modernism with which he is closely associated. After this, things settle down slightly, and “Monk’s Thelonious Sphere” is a wonderful tribute to one of his acknowledged heroes, in the form of a coversational sonic exchange between the album’s two primary instruments.
“Summertime” is a fresh and funky (thanks to that sultry bass line) interpretation of the jazz standard, tethered just enough to the original sound yet allowing itself plenty of room to explore where it might go. This is one of the great things about the jazz (and indeed blues and folk) approach to the musical canon. In other genres, covers, as they would be called, feel like an artist riding the coattails of the original recording. In jazz, reinterpreting a song regarded as part of the standard canon, it is more a case of picking up the torch and running with it into pastures new.
There is also room for Mueller to go it alone, as evidenced by “Birth Joy,” a cool and groovesome solo piece, although pieces such as “The Shape of Love,” although a duet, really allow Tomás Martínez’ mellifluous playing to take the focus as his saxophone dreamily drifts across the top of Mueller’s more sparing piano. Similarly, “Tide Pools” allows the saxophone to paint gorgeous beachscape imagery in the mind, while the piano feels like the ripples and sheens playing out across those sun-drenched pockets of water.
It’s a gorgeous album, rooted in familiarity yet able to thoroughly explore modern jazz as it heads into the future. It goes without saying that the playing is of the highest caliber, but it is also those deft and delicate arrangements that make everything so engaging.
And, as the title suggests, this is only the first volume of a brace of such music, and with the second instalment due for release on my birthday (2nd June), I’m already guaranteed one marvellous present on the day.
Pre-release listen of Blue Side
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