No Words Hawaii

No Words

Jim Brickman

Windham Hill Records, 1994

REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 09/18/2001

I have always found solo piano music to be some of the mostbeautiful out there. At the same time, there's always a twinge ofmelancholy as well. We're all familiar with what so many newsorganizations do whenever someone of note dies; in all of theirtribute programming, the background music is often just a pianoplaying.

And so, it seemed a bit weird for me to choose No Words, the 1994 debut effort from Jim Brickman, to be thefirst disc I listened to in its entirety following the events ofthe past few days. While the music is absolutely beautiful, it didstrike more than a chord of sadness in me - and while I'm certainthat Brickman created this disc to reflect gentle images of hislife that all could relate to, this disc takes on a new airaltogether.

In a sense, this isn't fair to Brickman. No Words is merely meant to be a collection of 12 originalworks that try and capture portraits in the gentle waves of thegrand piano. It is supposed to take you to scenes of waterfrontbeauty, images of fields of wheat awaiting the harvest, and evenoffer a poignant reminder of things which have been lost.

No Words can indeed do this, it is true - but even listeningto the disc prior to September 11, it almost felt like there was anunderlying sense of sadness to some of the music. Tracks like "OpenDoors" and "I Said You Said" have the power to move a listener totears if the mood is just right. That being said, No Words can alsohave the opposite effect, and serve as a soundtrack to romance, assongs like "Rocket To The Moon" and "Shaker Lakes" prove.