REVIEW BY ZOLA VAN of Really Big Shoes Publishing Co.

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REVIEW: Pure Piano Panoramas

     Pure Piano Panoramas by pianist/composer Jeff Bjorck is a landscape of emotion. His playing comes from a place of peace born of his deepest convictions, the vast untouchable beauty of nature and memories of people gentle and dear, and I am transported through a gentle web of sound to a quiet place. Comfortable harmonies support gentle twists and turns of melodic fragmented thought.
     Along the way as I drift from one track into another there are hauntingly beautiful melodies as in the opening track O, The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus. The melody seems to float above the lush, deep sonorous bass. The Joshua Trees stand lonely against a desert sky, pointing upward to the Sculptor of the Sky, another fine track. As Jeff's music reflects, the trees are steadfast, lonely and longing. This track is most beautiful after the key change and my mind drifts off to the clouds.
     Sculptor of the Sky is, in my opinion, one of the most melodic compositions and has some unexpected harmonic treatments, yet welcomingly comfortable, and takes my imagination far beyond the skyline before me to the place where I stand small in the vastness of beautiful simplicity. In Desert Cloudburst the opening melody is lovely beyond words or place. I find myself longing to hear it repeated throughout and waiting for each reintroduction of its statement. I am rewarded and smile. The tracks of Porch Swing Summer Night, Homestead, and Remembering Gramma are melodies of long ago and seem to float my thoughts to another time, an era lost in the passing of days turned to years. While I listened to these tracks and appreciated them for their simplicity and the warm personal memories and feelings they brought me, I did not feel they represented Jeff's truest stylistic gift. However, on the closing track Holy, Holy, Holy Jeff comes forth with the styling, lushness and beauty I have grown to appreciate in his music.
     Pure Piano Panoramas is a quality recording with beautiful photography by Jeff. I recommend this CD without hesitation and have proudly given it as a gift to my dear friends. This is truly "quiet music to calm the heart in a noisy world." This is music touched by hands of heaven.
   - Zola Van

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