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Harvey Diamond & John Lentz, how strange the road should be so easy
LISTEN To how strange the road should be so easy
They said, “You’re too old to make an album.” Thank goodness John Lentz ignored them.
If you were in the U.S. Pacific Northwest during the 1970s, you might have tossed a coin in John’s street musician’s hat in Seattle, Eugene, or Berkeley. Between then and now, John became a dad and a healthcare professional, with music being an essential part of his life the entire time.
John eventually relocated to Massachusetts and continued to perform with his trio while always continuing to develop his jazz chops. Attending the annual Vermont Jazz Center Summer Workshops, he met and was mentored by vocal masters Jay Clayton and Sheila Jordan, who said “I really dig your voice, John!”. At VJC, John also met pianist Harvey Diamond.
One of Lennie Tristano’s last students, and often described as “one of the unsung heroes of the Boston jazz scene since the mid-1960s,” Harvey spent decades in the shadows of jazz, backing up luminaries like vocalist Sheila Jordan and saxophonist Dave Liebman, who calls him “a true master”. Harvey taught at the renowned Berklee College of Music and continues to teach and lead workshops in Boston and other areas.
In the Fall of 2020, the country had been in lockdown for 6 months and live music had all but disappeared. John called his friend Harvey to inquire on his well-being; Harvey told him that he had access to an unused performing arts space with a good piano, and invited John to join him for “outlaw” jam sessions: live music just for the two of them, made not to please an audience or a club owner, but to serve the music and themselves. Based on jazz standards, the music was spontaneously improvised, never the same in four years of weekly sessions.
A serendipitous encounter facilitated by Clayton led to the duo meeting Montreal-based vocalist Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, curator of Orchard of Pomegranates Records. The three worked together remotely to record how strange the road should be so easy (March 21, 2025, Orchard of Pomegranates Records). This is John’s debut recording and a first for Harvey recording as a principal on a label. Together, this album gives Harvey’s playing the attention it so deeply deserves.
The emotional connection between performer and music on how strange the road should be so easy is palpable. Invoking the iconic Bill Evans/Tony Bennett and Ran Blake/Jeanne Lee piano/voice pairings, the album’s song list spans beloved classics like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to more obscure, haunting compositions such as Charles Mingus’ “Duke Ellington’s Song of Love”.
Of the latter, John states, “‘Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love’ is not often recorded. It’s musically challenging; I’ve heard it described as deep. Lyrically, it is an autobiographical piece by Mingus, as he illuminates us as to what Duke Ellington’s music meant to him in his search for his own sound. I had been working on the piece for a couple of years without finding any musicians who could help me plumb the depths of this piece. When I brought the piece to Harvey, I was elated to find that he was familiar with it. The intensity of feeling that he brought to playing this piece, along with his technical skill on piano allowed me to go inside the tune, explore the nuances and eventually tell the story the way I heard it in my mind.”
A somewhat surprising addition to the album’s repertoire is the oft-covered “Ain’t Misbehavin’”- generally not considered a love song, it usually winds up as just a bouncy little familiar tune in someone’s setlist. In John and Harvey’s hands, the song takes on a far different vibe. John explains, “The task with “Ain’t Misbehavin’” was to find a different way to explore this story. So we slowed it down, turning it into a bluesy ballad. I think the pain of unrequited love becomes obvious in our presentation. Once again, storytelling with music and feeling. Harvey and I discovered that together and shared it on the recording.”
Now, dear reader, you are a mere click away from hearing the product of what these two seasoned musicians, whom you may be discovering for the first time, created together at this April 2024 recording session. What are you waiting for?