Rich Halley, Carson Halley, The Wild

Tenorman Rich Halley has been making great strides forward in modern, avant contemporary jazz for quite some time now. His albums are consistently focused on the highest standards of the music, on the heightened peaks of expression that make new jazz one of the joys of modern existence.

He returns with a near-perfect expression in the duo zone, just Rich, his tenor (and a little wooden flute) accompanied by his son Carson on drums. Carson keeps sounding better and better. He is an ideal partner and co-equal on this set.

The Wild (Pine Eagle 810) has a series of ten improvisations, some with added compositional elements, others untrammeled forays into ecstatically charged open space. An obvious genetic relationship with John Coltrane and Rashid Ali's duo recordings of the last phase of Trane's career exists here. But that is probably a given on ANY sax-drum outing in the free zone these days. It is a touchpoint, a springboard from which arises tabula rasa expression. Similarly you might hear a bit of the influence of Ornette Coleman's harmolodic openness. But that also might be appropriately seen as the bedrock from which the art form has developed since Ornette's celebrated first recordings and onwards.

Fact is, though, that Rich is his own person on tenor and continues to grow and excel on his own terms. He has by now created a complex personal voice and a rich personal vocabulary that you can hear at peak levels on The Wild.

From the brash and energetically lucid to the free equivalent of balladic pastoral emanations, all form an important part of this set. It is tour de force saxophony. And Carson is much more than a mere foil to Rich's exhilarating effusions. His drumming drives the music with power and poise.

Like the sound of the ocean, there is near infinite variability and mood. Rich has attained a pure improvisational level that only the most accomplished in the art ever get to. He makes use of the full pallet of notes and tone colors available to him and does so with the innate wisdom of somebody who phrases in the best and most varied ways, the sound of a master.

And that makes him one of the West Coast's greatest living jazzmen, to my mind.

I recommend this one highly. You will have much to appreciate here, so go ahead and order it! It's at the apex of new jazz today.