Reviewed by Paul Poulton

If you sometimes wonder what Richard Smallwood got up to between the years of 1975 and 1993 this CD will give you the answer. Furthermore, if you blended Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Oscar Peterson and Andrae Crouch you may end up with a musical smoothie fairly close to the flavour of Richard's recorded work. It's a gospel synthesis not to everyone's liking, but I for one am quite intrigued by the amalgamation of styles. In the instrumental "The Lord's Prayer" Richard has a way of making one repeated chord agreeable, if not exciting. Occasionally the classical side of the man overcomes the gospel side and the fluctuation in tempo is what you would expect from a concert pianist, but loses the steady groove needed for gospel singing. The man also gets a little arpeggio happy and can't seem to stop his fingers running all over the fingerboard like miniature Keystone cops wondering where to run next. Having said that, the Richard Smallwood Singers are worthy of note and the reason they don't seem spectacular now is because of the age of some of the tracks, and gospel music has been moving along apace since those days. But when their full steam ahead vocals get going as in "Wonderful Counsellor", it's hard to resist the pull.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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