Reviewed by Stella Middlemiss

This album consists of twelve instrumental arrangements of well known praise songs in a jazz-orientated, easy listening style.  It's definitely middle-of-the-road music and should cater to a wide listening audience. The pattern throughout is to present a theme and then throw it around between the musicians, who produce a series of finely honed variations. The musician­ship is excellent throughout, with a real feeling of unity from the band; they obviously had a lot of fun putting this together.  It's strange that they don't seem to have thought it worth while giving themselves a name. All seven musicians get their chance to shine, although David Heming himself steals the glory, for me, in brilliant sparkling arrangements like "Through Our God". Personally, I find the up­tempo numbers are more successful, e.g. "What A Friend We Have In Jesus", and "Jesus Put This Song/You Shall Go Out With Joy", both of which are fine, unaffected, foot-tapping romps. The more reflective numbers tend to blandness and even the skill of the instrumentalists doesn't disguise the boring structure of some of the songs. David Heming's choice of songs is, in fact, the only area of judgement I would question. "We Bring A Sacrifice Of Praise" sounds unnervingly like "Pack Up Your Troubles" in places. Still this album makes a good alternative to the usual vocal praise album and the music has just enough bite to make it acceptable to a lot of people.

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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