Why this guy isn’t a household name is beyond me. Steven Schoenberg gives you everything you ask for in a solo, improvisational jazz piano album – music with passion, fury, creativity, imagination, and heart.

Recorded mostly at Smith College’s Sweeney Concert Hall in Northampton, Mass., Schoenberg plays the fourth song, “In the Darkness,” with the lights off, and does a four-handed improvisation on the seventh song, “Father and Son,” with his son, composer Adam Schoenberg, at the keyboard with him.

Steven Schoenberg has a lush, wonderful musical vision that’s hard to walk away from. He creates a multilayered, mind-bending sound. He closes out with his take on two Great American Songbook classics, “A Time for Peace” and “An American Encore.”

Tom Henry, Toledoblade.com