My review of Roddy Ellias Trio's superb Monday's Dream, today at All About Jazz.

Since returning home to Ottawa after spending much of his adult life as an associate music professor at Concordia University in Montréal, Roddy Ellias may have retired but he's far from slowing down. Retirement's just a word, but for this extraordinary guitarist it's clearly been a liberating one; based on Monday's Dream, his first recording since returning to Ottawa, it's suiting him very, very well, indeed.

While he still plays a hollow body electric guitar on occasion, Ellias' main axe has been, for many years, a nylon-string classical guitar—suited, as it is, for his interest in contemporary new music, jazz and classical repertoire. If there are hints of Ralph Towner in Ellias' often abstruse but nevertheless compelling compositions, it's because the two share a commonality: the evolution of harmonic languages that make them unmistakable from the first notes of a tune, whether it's a standard like Antonio Carlos Jobim's "How Insensitive," performed in his occasionally convening duo with Jersey-based guitarist Vic Juris at the 2013 GuitarNow! workshop in Ottawa last spring, or onMonday's Dream's ten originals that range from relatively new compositions like the darkly lyrical title track, which features an appropriately melody-centric solo from bassist Adrian Vedady, to "Somewhere Under the Rainbow," an oblique a cappella solo piece originally played in duo with pianist Dave Hildinger, an also retired but influential educator and inspiration on the Ottawa scene.

Contine reading here...