"Sam Yahel has been playing jazz in New York since the early 1990s, almost always as a Hammond organist. (He was a fixture in the early days of Smalls, on West 10th Street, along with the pianist Brad Mehldau and the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel; these days he leads his own trio.) But he hasn’t hid behind the bullying power of the Hammond, its ability to give you shivers with shifting drawbars or a loud crescendo: he has put himself in places where pianists go, playing volatile music with curiosity and hunger in his improvising."
"Sam Yahel has made the grade. His signature Hammond B3 sound—appearing on both his own work and on recordings by Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell, and Norah Jones—has identified him as one of the players that will take Jimmy Smith's favorite instrument deep into the 21st century. So what does Yahel do on Hometown, his fifth disc as a leader? He puts the organ in the closet and does a piano-trio record, which believe it or not, is a good move."
