Small band big trombone equals fabulous!!
S. Jazz | 12/08/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Not a regular reviewer here but love this music! Check out these partial notes from [...]:
He always compelled attention. Not by blasting with his horn or through extrovertish antics on stand. Quite the opposite. The sinuous power of Bob Brookmeyer was in his subtlety - of melodic line, time, and wit. And in the perennial freshness of his imagination. I heard him more than scores of times with Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, and the combo he co-led with Clark terry. Always, there were suprises. It was as impossible for Brookmeyer to be dull as to not swing.
Then, some ten years ago, Brookmeyer all but disappeared. Not off the face of the earth, but from the big-league jazz scene. He'd gone to California, and became part of the musical background for carious television series. I missed him. I missed him a lot because while there is indeed a marvelously active spectrum of trombonists - from Vic Dickenson to you George Lewis - there is no one with Brookmeyer's special kind of mordant lyricism.
At last, however, the exile has returned. Back in New York, - "the energy is here," says Brookmeyer - Bob is wholly involved in jazz again. Leading the extraordinary unit in this album, and writing more extensively and ambitiously than ever before.
The group here - Jack Wilkins, Michael Moore, and Joe LaBarbera - is "the first group I've had as a leader that I'm serious about," Bob says. "In the past, I'd think of a group in terms of a week or a month. My whole life then was sort of disposable. Night clubs were disposable, bands were disposable. But now, I've taken over my life and I have a group that I can stand up and be proud of. It's not something I feel I'll be through with after a gig and then go on to something else. This band has an intent to live."
Already, as you can hear, it is a band that sounds as if it's been together for months, even years, so quickly attentive as well as inventive are all its parts Jack Wilkins, in my view, is the most imaginative guitarist to have emerged since Jim Hall. He's been with Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie, among others, but I first heard him with Buddy Rich. In a welcome solo spot after the magnified machine-gun sound of that big band, Wilkins practically hypnotized the whole room with a ballad that kept changing shapes and colors as if it were enchanted. Then later in the same set, he swung hard enough to carry the whole band.
"Jack is a musician," says Brookmeyer, "who has all the tols to do anything he wants. And he can sound any number of different ways."
Mike Moore has the same high and continually climbing reputation among musicians as does Wilkins. His credits include stretches with Woody Herman, Marian McPartland, Freddie Hubbard, the Ruby Braff-George Barnes quartet, Maria Muldaur, and Benny Goodman. Soundly grounded in classical as well as jazz bass, Moore is so distinctive a player that the usually low-key Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker has written this hosanna:"
Artistry and taste
Wilfred | CT | 01/18/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is a great album - the musicianship is immpecable. Each member of the band has loads of chops but they only do what's necessary for the song. Sometimes what you don't play is more important than what you do."
Track Listings (8) - Disc #1