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By DAN BILAWSKY – All About Jazz\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Ballads](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michaelpedicin.com\/n\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ballads-200.jpg?resize=200%2C178&ssl=1\")
Ballads are often consumed as one of many items on a musical tasting menu, but they can also serve as a satisfying meal on their own, when prepared by the right chef. On Ballads…Searching For Peace, tenor saxophonist Michael Pedicin serves up seven satisfying songs from the softer side of jazz, while also paying tribute to some tenors of note.<\/p>\n
John Coltrane’s Ballads (Impulse!, 1963) was the inspiration behind this album, but the dearly departed icon is merely one of several tenor titans to be referenced throughout this recording. Pedicin pays tribute to Wayne Shorter as he visits “Virgo,” from Night Dreamer (Blue Note, 1964), and gives a nod toward Hank Mobley\u2014the man that Leonard Feather called “the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone”\u2014by tackling one of his lesser-known tunes (“Home At Last”). Elsewhere, he tips his cap to Joe Henderson, by occupying the role that Henderson once held on McCoy Tyner’s “Search For Peace,” and references the aforementioned Coltrane album by borrowing a number from that outing (“You Don’t Know What Love Is”).<\/p>\n