I have an idea that pianist Spike Wilner has read Kenny Werner‘s book Effortless Mastery: Liberating The Master Musician Within (1996), because Koan emulates Werner’s lessons in surrendering one’s self to music. Werner’s teachings on enlightenment flow through this trio recording, Wilner’s sixth as a leader. As a disciple of Harlem stride and ragtime, Wilner, like so ...Read More

When a musician uses, in his music, ‘chance’ operations in order to free the ego from likes and dislikes, trusting that this use is comparable to sitting cross-legged with a musical-ancestor-teacher and allows the way of Zen to work it is possible that the mind not cut itself off from Mind, but let Mind flow through it. This, it would seem is the ‘koan’ that has wrought the fine music that ...Read More

We find with pleasure the New York pianist Spike Wilner four years after “The Tenderness” previous album which borrowed its title (and the jacket picture) to a work of his grandmother, the artist Marie Wilner (born in 1910). Koan with his reference to the Buddhist concept of spiritual awakening and his picture in the Zen spirit, we find it very touching feature of a musician lucid styl ...Read More

Man, those guys at Posi-Tone are on a roll! Spike Wilner’s Koan is as engaging a piano trio CD as you’ll hope to hear. I thought I was done with basic piano trios but Wilner is so inventive, his originals so, uh, original, his covers so well-picked and performed, that if you have to hear yet another piano trio, let it be he. Of course, bassist Tyler Mitchell and drummer Anthony Pinci ...Read More

Pianist Spike Wilner brings a refreshing lack of pretention to his work on the trio recording Koan, with bassist Tyler Mitchell and drummer Anthony Pinciotti. There’s something so easygoing and unassuming in his playing and his compositions that you can’t help but like the man, and the jaunty opener, his original composition “Iceberg Slim,” captures you right at the start. The title track ...Read More

Pianist and composer Spike Wilner, a native of Manhattan, may be best known for his “night job”, manager of both Smalls Jazz Club and its next-door neighbor, Mezzrow.  He’s also quite an accomplished pianist and band leader; “Koan” is his 10th album as a leader and 3rd for the Posi-Tone label.  The CD, like his previous release, “La Tendresse“, is a trio ...Read More