His own compositions are serious enough, but the synthesis of ambitious jazz with light funk-pop sometimes comes off awkward. He's got the talent and training, but that unique imprint is still in the experimental stages.

Overall, the quibbles about a lack of identity are easy to forgive. After all, as great as Takin' Off is, Herbie Hancock didn't exactly rewrite jazz history with it; that came later. There's no reason to think that Taylor Eigsti couldn't shake things up eventually, given what he's shown on Let It Come To You. Once he's done distilling all his wide-ranging influences down to his own voice, watch out.

Bernie Worrell Improvisario
The term "Bernie Worrell" would show up as a synonym if you looked up the word "funk" in the thesaurus. As one of the principal supporting architects of George Clinton's groundbreaking P-Funk sound, we couldn't help but to salute Worrell before. But with Improvisario, he provides a refreshing glimpse of other sides of him. After all, this classically-trained pianist has been a sideman for a wide variety of artists ranging from Robben Ford to Pharoah Sanders.

Nonetheless, it's no shocker that Improvisczario, which hit the streets last September, is bubbling over with grooves. What's surprising is that it does so in such organic, varying ways, and not all of it is funky. Perhaps recording live in the studio and making up the tunes on the spot has a lot to do with that (and thus, the album's title). To hear Worrell just jam and not be concerned at all with smoothing out the edges is a real treat.

The first cut "New Boss" finds Worrell sounding more like Ahmad Jamal than his funky self, laying his sparse grand piano lines on top of Will Calhoun's (Living Colour) relentless open snare. "Up In The Hills" adds Bill Bass' bass to the line-up as well as the banjo of Mike Gordon (Phish).

Toward the end, Worrell is quoting Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar," which is probably what most listeners are asking themselves with this song. Bass gets more overtly funky on "Bass On The Line" while Bernie switches over to electric piano. Gov't Mule's Warren Haynes joins in with a nasty wah-wah guitar on "Dirty" and the monster "Killer Mosquito." The last cut "Celeste" features Worrell on that very un-funky instrument of the same name, but still manages to groove alongside Bass with it.

The unstructured setting of Improvisczario make this pretty unpolished and at times the jams threaten not to go anywhere, but the searching nature of these songs find gold more often than they don't. It's Worrell at his most relaxed and unfiltered. Likewise, listeners can relax when they soak in this CD, too.