Emily Remler: Cookin’ at the Queens—Live in Las Vegas 1984 & 1988

Captured during two performances at the 4 Queens jazz club, electric guitarist Emily Remler plays with romantic sensitivity, focused intensity, and personal phrasing. Supported by four Vegas showroom stalwarts—bassist Carson Smith, pianist Cocho Arbe (1984), and drummers Tom Montgomery (1984) and John Pisci (1988)—Remler exhibits the crisp comping, tight octaves, and breakneck runs absorbed from Wes Montgomery and Pat Martino. Interpreting American songbook standards, bop and modern classics, and lilting bossa nova and samba—by the likes of Cole Porter, Bobby Timmons, Montgomery, Martino, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Antonio Carlos Jobim—Remler dazzles note after note, phrase upon phrase, especially in unaccompanied cadenzas. The vinyl pressings are clean, present, and warmly rounded, putting Remler’s guitar just out in front of the solid and swinging rhythm sections, and Bill Milkowski’s thorough liner notes provide lucid historical context. One wonders where Remler would have taken her music had she not succumbed to heart failure in 1990 at age 32.