Bennett Paster, Relentless Pursuit of the Beautiful

A good hard-bop session still makes it in my book. That's what you get with Bennett Paster's Relentless Pursuit of the Beautiful (self released). The gathering is in the form of a sextet, with guest percussionist Gilad adding a seventh voice for part of the set.

Bennett Paster penned the compositions and plays a quite convincing piano for the program. He's got a Harris through Hancock feel, harmonically hip, line fluent. There's a three-horn front line for those Blue Note type voicings and Paster takes advantage in the writing. Joel Frahm is on tenor, Tim Armacost on tenor and soprano, and Alex Pope Norris plays the trumpet. All can solo in the syle with good facility, velocity, and taste. And they do. The rhythm team of Gregory Ryan and Willard B Dyson Jr, bass and drums, do all you would expect to get the session swinging.

It's well-crafted mainstream jazz, with nicely written tunes and well played solos. You will not be disappointed if you come to it expecting to hear the serious side of what that is. And your toes will tap when they feel it.

Chris Massey & the NJP, Whosoever

Mainstream jazz has been at a crossroads for many years now. Some of it is troublesome to me because it does not have the fire, passion or conviction for the forms it takes on. The players in question seemingly have dutifully learned the changes to a bunch of standard jazz and songbook works and simply played over them according to a set of rulebook guidelines, it seems, and in those cases, there is a mannerist tendency that doesn't always make for good listening, or original, good jazz.

Drummer Chris Massey and his NJP do not have that problem. They play a firy later Blue Note era form of mainstream with definite conviction and skill. This is on their album Whosoever (Power Cosmic 8131).

Massey writes very good originals and they form the centerpiece to the disk. The band also tackles standards like "Old Devil Moon," jazz evergreens like "Giant Steps" and things less played these days too, like Roland Kirk's "Pedal Up." And then there are some newer jazz compositions by others, notably one by Jeff "Tain" Watt.

All this works because the band has gotten inside the music and lived it--pianist Willerm Delisfort with a bit of a Tyneresque feel in the left hand and good solo instincts, Chris Taleo with a solid foundational bass anchorage, the one-two punch of front liners Adam Larson on tenor and soprano, with a Trane-and-after sensibility that is evolved without sounding like the flavor of the day, and trumpetist Benny Benack III with a brass-proud exuberance and extroversion that fits the style to perfection.

Chris Massey has a great swinging time-role to fill which he does with distinction. His solo shots will surprise and please you, too.

What's especially important is that the music comes at you as the real thing. There is no feeling that you are eating yesterday's mashed potatoes reheated, so to speak.

And so it makes for great listening.

The Mike Wofford/Holly Hofmann Quintet, Turn Signal

Mike's Wofford's well defined pianism and musical personality was an important component of Shelly Manne's last units. Holly Hofmann has been gaining increasing credence as a flautist of considerable resource and mainstream inspirations. Put the two together with Terell Stafford (trumpet and flugel), Rob Thorsen (bass) and Richard Sellers (drums), and give them some interesting material to work with and you have something worthwhile. That is, on Turn Signal (Capri 74111-2).

I like the repertoire, an original each by both leaders, some lesser-known jazz compositions, including Dick Twardzik's "The Girl From Greenland," and a standard ("Pure Imagination"). The arrangements are well wrought and create landmarks through which the improvisations weave.

Wofford sounds excellent on piano these days. A complete melodist-harmonist in the sophisticated tonal vein that Bill Evans most succinctly established in his own way, Mike Wofford in another. Hofmann has a beautiful tone, good ideas and some soul too. Mr. Stafford has equal solo billing much of the time and deserves the hearing he gets as a well-burnished noteful presence. The rhythm team knows where to put the pulse, embellishes and drives at the appropriate points, and gets in the groove.

So in the end this is thoroughly accomplished, thoroughly enjoyable straight-ahead jazz. It should have a wide appeal.

Mike Longo Trio + 2, "Surprise:" Hard Bopping and Burning Contemporary Jazz

Pianist Mike Longo came to fame as a member of Cannonball Adderly's and Dizzy Gillespie's units and, well, he's been around the scene ever since. If he doesn't always get his due, his new CD To My Surprise (CAP 1030) may help fix that. It's his formidable trio of himself, Bob Cranshaw, bass, and Lewis Nash, drums, plus the welcome addition of two excellent horn players in Jimmy Owens (trumpet and fluegel) and tenorist Lance Bryant.

The quintet barrels through some new bop, blues and gospel funk by Mike and one by Jimmy Owen, some jazz chestnuts (Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock) and standards. Everyone sounds great, not the least being Maestro Longo himself.

It has that burning fire, smoldering in the balladic interludes, breaking into full flame on the swingers.

It's as good a place as any to dig into Mike Longo the artist. This is center-of-the-pavement mainstem jazz done right.