Don Harvey
Light Shines Through
Freedom Records

Don Harvey has had a long music career filled with many collaborations and performances. The Austin-based drummer has lived in both New York and Tel Aviv and combines sounds from his experiences around the United States and the Middle East. Light Shines Through highlights his beautiful composition skills, and the many styles and genres he has performed and been exposed to, including classical, jazz, Middle Eastern, blues, and rock, profoundly influence this work. Because of this, the album is extremely unique and enjoyable.

The orchestration of the all-instrumental album includes drums, piano, trumpet, bass, guitar, and cello, among others. Trumpet solos and piano comping give the album a distinct jazz sound, but the drums and other compositional aspects of the music suggest ideas from many other genres. “Yasmin” includes many Middle Eastern harmonic and melodic ideas that are blended with the Western sounds of jazz and rock. The consistency of Harvey’s drumming ties together the song and the album as a whole. “Whirl” is more of a rock song than many on the album and includes an extended and bluesy electric guitar solo. The following track, “Light Shines Through,” begins with solo cello and builds to a larger instrumentation, showing off Harvey’s classical background; it has many elements of psychedelic rock towards the end, but it still keeps the original classical motif. The last song is a long culmination of the sounds introduced throughout the album, performed with a large orchestration, and experiments with many interesting sounds including bowed vibraphone and an electric organ.

This instrumental work is filled with interesting ideas and beautifully combines wonderful elements of many genres. The songs are long, giving the songs time to fully develop and the melodies room to grow. Don Harvey has performed with artists such as Ian McLagan, Charlie Sexton, and Billy Bragg, and his compositions allow us to see the styles of these artists shifted and changed into something interesting and creative.

by Hunter Tolbert