Matt Bauder and Day in Pictures, Nightshades

Tenor-man Matt Bauder is one of those jazz artists that sneaks up on you. Before you know it he is doing something great. And then you look back and realize he's been doing that an awful lot. This once again is true--of his quintet "Day in Pictures" date Nightshades (Clean Feed 289). It's a group of heavies in Matt, Nate Wooley on trumpet, Kris Davis on piano, Jason Ajemian on double bass and Tomas Fujiwara on drums. Each brings with her/him his/her own way, as anyone who follows the scene will know.

And then from the first number, "Octavia Minor," there is that hip Blue Note-Impulse-new-thing period sound in the tunes, with just enough structure and melodic suggestiveness to set the tone for what amount of looseness and what amount of tightness follows in the solos. That's pretty much true across the board.

The head compositions do what they do like that and at the same time stay in your head. And these players respond to the implications of each piece with excellent work, individual expressions of the best sort of jazz kind.

This is the sort of music, I think, that is beyond a time period and into a permanence of hipness. I believe this album will still sound good in 50 years, and would have sounded good 50 years ago, too.

Listen to Matt give us his testimony on the tenor. It's very together. But everybody is that--a very well-matched five-some.

I won't say more of the place of this album in some grand scheme, because who am I to say what people will single out in 50 years? For me, right now, this is music I am very glad to hear. It is the jazz of the right-captured-moments. And so it hits me on top of the head with the command to "listen"! And the more I do, the better I feel about the music.

Don't let this one slip past you. It has that something all excellent modern sessions should have. The solid sending plus the unexpected twists and turns of the creative approach and lots of talent.