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Pianist Maureen Girard's new CD exudes tranquility and evergreen beauty of Pacific Northwest

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There is a rain-soaked ambience that haunts the piano jazz of Portrait in Four Colors, the debut album from Maureen Girard. Girard recorded the album in South Whidbey Island in the Pacific Northwest, and it exudes the tranquility and evergreen beauty of that region. This is one of the few records that you could see as well as hear. Girard didn't use the word portrait in the title for its poetic touch; her music unreels like photographs in the mind.

If Girard is compared to a painter, then what images do these songs conjure? That depends on your imagination. Girard's sublime, reflective piano playing on the opening track, “Infancia," illustrates the soothing flow of an ocean's waves while Clipper Anderson's pulsating bass captures the deepness of its blue complexion. On “Without You," the moody prettiness of Girard's piano is a postcard of nature itself; it's the soundtrack to grey clouds hovering over fields of trees and birds soaring through the air. Girard's own composition, “City Blues," is accurately titled because her playing adopts newly found swagger, echoing the swinging energy of metropolitan life.

In addition to Anderson, Girard is skillfully supported by snappy drummer Brian Kirk and Thomas Marriott, whose emotionally charged performances with the trumpet and flugelhorn add weight to many of the tracks here. They piece together a Portrait in Four Colors with sumptuous melodies and immaculate musicianship.

Girard has been playing the piano since the age of seven. Her earliest musical influences consisted of the legends that she heard or met at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada, where her Uncle Eddie worked as a stage manager. They included Frank Sinatra, Buddy Rich, and The Liberace Jazztet. Portrait in Four Colors is clearly a labor of love, showcasing the abilities she has spent the last few decades sharpening as well as expressing her admiration for jazz's greatest heroes such as Duke Ellington and Jaco Pastorius.

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