Samuel Blaser Quartet, Spring Rain

Trombonist Samuel Blaser comes front-and-center in a new album that further cements his reputation as an important exponent on the new jazz scene. He and his quartet give us much to like on Spring Rain (Whirlwind 4670). It is a trombonist's tribute to Jimmy Giuffre, not what you might have especially expected if you know Blaser's previous work (type his name in the search box to get the previous reviews of his music here), but then when you listen it has a logic of its own that fits in with the Blaser approach and goes a long way to bring the Giuffre sensibility into today.

The album features three Giuffre compositions, two by Carla Bley and the rest Blaser originals that take some of the implications of vintage Giuffre and extend them. The band is a quartet that packs lots on invention and swing into the proceedings. Russ Lossing is on piano and keys, Drew Gress on bass, and Gerald Cleaver on drums. Samuel and the three are fully mature, innovative artists in their prime and the music shows it with excellence.

There is a Giuffre-like attention to sound statements on each instrument, trombone first and foremost but no less the piano-keys, the bass and the drums. They can engage in chamber like new improvisations out of time, in the manner of the middle-period Giuffre groups, they can swing heartily on thematically well-developed modes, and/or they can get vibrantly "free."

Blaser sounds great, choosing his notes carefully and colorfully, with even a nod to Mangelsdorfian multi-phonics but in the main an open-horn liquidity. Lossing comes through with some really fetching work. And the Gress-Cleaver rhythm team functions very nicely as part of the melodic invention as well as the propulsors of a very hip time sense.

I found this album a milestone in creative improv presentness. The choice themes when utilized inspire all to go further and the freely conceived moments continue the inspiration in a first-class fashion. Samuel Blaser is a top trombonist in the new jazz field and this quartet qualifies as one of the most vibrant out there today.

Need I say more?

Phil Haynes, No Fast Food, In Concert, with David Liebman and Drew Gress

With a trio of sax, bass and drums in modern advanced jazz these days we expect to have a good amount of interplay between the three artists. Drummer Phil Haynes and his No Fast Food trio has that and maybe even more than is the norm. Haynes has supremely capable improvisers in David Liebman on tenor, soprano and flute and Drew Gress on bass. No one needs to tell you that if you follow the music, yet Phil's compositions and the sequenced dynamic that is on display between Haynes and cohorts make this band explosively triple.

Often enough these days if a band is drummer-led you may not be able to tell. He or she may not always be out front. Not so with No Fast Food. Phil Haynes gives us lots of excellent drumming, though he is in no way out to steal the show. It is a naturally organic triple-sound.

You can hear this plainly and to good advantage on the 2-CD In Concert (CornerStoreJazz) out fairly recently.

The music is culled from two small jazz venue appearances. Both find the band in top form. Liebman seems to be grateful for the hard swinging, open approach of the trio, for he sounds his very best. He is a living master, of course, and does not hang back. Drew Gress has paid dues and played with all kinds of folks, gaining in poise and stature cumulatively as time goes by, so that now he is doing some of his best work. He may not come off the tip of your tongue if someone asks you to name three of the top modern jazz bass players today, but there is no doubt he is one of the very finest for sheer musical imagination and deeply rich tone. And Phil Haynes! He swings hard like Elvin, has an acute sense of set sound and inventive figuration like Tony, and he plays with the others, not especially against them (and not to take away from the latter strategy when it works). He shines forth as an especially well-integrated musical drum master in this trio. A player who has soaked up the tradition and gives out with himself.

That's what you hear in these two full disks, the sound of a very together trio that can play a blues with a soulful contemporary stance, take it out, and at the same time work within varying compositional structures for a program that never tires.

It is perhaps a sleeper? There is so much coming out these days that you might miss it if you are not paying attention. But you should not because it is some great new jazz!

Get it if you can. For Liebman. For Gress. And for Phil Haynes.

Ralph Alessi, Baida

The trumpet has over the more than 100 years of jazz we know of become an instrument of central importance. I don't need to tell you this. But think of it. The trumpet is to jazz as the violin is to classical music. It's a pivotal instrument. (Just like the tenor is to the pianoforte in the two genres; but then the piano is to the piano, too!)

And Ralph Alessi is right there these days doing a pivotal advanced action. Sure there are others, too. A lot of very good ones out there. But listen to him on the recent Baida (ECM 2321) and you'll know he is in with the heavies.

There's a quartet of great players on this. Ralph, Jason Moran on piano, Drew Gress, bass, and Nasheet Waits on drums. They play around with rock-funk in a post-Milesian mode without channeling any of the usual riffs, just building off the feel and playing themselves along with Alessi compositional lines. They have free moments, they swing, and there is original music. That's what hits me especially--this music is a conceptual step ahead in feel, original compositional lines melding with state-of-the-art improvisation.

I don't need to tell you about these players if you know the music today, except to say they are in great form and Ralph shows you what he is made of!

I may be reviewing this one a little later than usual, but a couple of months doesn't change the fact that this album steps up to the plate and nails one out of here. Listen!!