"With ""The Traveler"" Kenny Barron offers us an album of ballads that are both timeless, and subtly new, in the soft manner in which he slips imperceptibly between one mood and another.
Beneath its apparent eclecticism, ""The Traveler"", finally, is perhaps the most personal, most accomplished record ever released by Kenny Barron. It is a masterpiece from a poet of ellipses and insinuation, and it brims with elegance and melancholy; without a doubt, in this decidedly lavish world, it opens out onto even more horizons.
With all his senses on the alert, Barron allows the mood of the album to drift unnoticeably towards other, more sensually contemporary territories, thereby providing the finest example of the incredible adaptability that is still the heart of his genius: that unique way of allowing himself to be carried into the universe of the musicians he accompanies—and those accompanying him—while the music, not even for a moment, never ceases to belong to him."
|