For A Better Tomorrow. Liner notes by Bryan Morton.

It’s always possible to get hung up on definitions, or metaphors. In modern jazz terms the most famous description of a piano is probably Cecil Taylor’s “88 tuned drums”, a clever way of characterizing the instrument’s percussive power and of removing it from the strong gravitational pull of European art music. I’ve always preferred Leigh Hunt’s lovely description of the piano as a harp in a box. It’s not clear whether Hunt meant it seriously, or as a sly put-down.
The great essayist was the supposed original of Dickens’s Harold Skimpole in Bleak House, the amoral, childlike perpetual guest, so he may not be a trustworthy authority. But what a beautiful description, and much as many seemed to have been charmed out of their money by Hunt, I’ve always tended to judge piano players by how closely they accord with that sound-image. The harp has complex associations, ranging from angelic orchestras to a Marx Brother, but despite its statuesque presence in the symphony orchestra, it’s also a very primitive instrument, whose ancestors – the koto, gayageum, kacapi, clarsach, đàn tranh, and many more - are close kin to Cecil Taylor’s drums.
It’s hardly going to be a surprise at this point to announce that I think of Michel Reis as a superb harpist. This isn’t to suggest that he does nothing but sweeping arpeggios, but just listen to the opening of “Bound Together” or the delightful title tune here and you might agree. The point is that for all its various ethnographic variations and its sculpted sophistication in the modern orchestra, the harp is a fairly primitive instrument. Arguably the first one was just an arrangement of wires or gut strings, left hanging in the wind to produce the ultimate in naturalistic sound.
The endless delight of Reis’s playing is always how natural it sounds. Even at his most virtuosic, and he has a technique that will be the envy of all young piano players, it never sounds effortful or forced, or done to impress.
Everything is there for the betterment of the song. You note that on the more oblique items here, like “Coal Harbour”, “Aquene” and “Paper Feathers”. The other place the harp was used was in storytelling. It may be that the Odyssey, or England’s Beowulf, were recited with accompanying sweeps of some kind of small harp. Appalachian ballads were often accompanied by some kind of monochord. So it’s not surprising, with this in mind,
to find two Bob Dylan songs in Reis’s programme. They may initially stand out as self-conscious nods to the “new standards” movement, but they’re more basic than that. Music tells a story. The story requires some kind of backing. The harp, or one of its many cognates, most obviously the guitar (which is a harp with a box attached), is the obvious candidate. How could you not love an album called For A Better Tomorrow? Ultimately, that is what art is about. It proposes slightly better arrangements in the nature of things. Nothing utopian, never final (even if some of us do hope to hear a sweep of the strings as we draw a last breath!), but always looking forward to the next thing and to betterment. Reis strikes me strongly as a man who sees the world naturalistically and calmly, for what it is, but
who always conveys hope and not so much optimism as the confidence of further effort. Each fresh statement seems like a little step beyond the last one and this is his most heartwarming and bracing record yet.

Brian Morton
Brian Morton is a Scottish writer, journalist and broadcaster, mainly specialising in jazz and modern literature.
He is co-author of The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings.