recommendations: July 2007 Archives

Sue Raney, Heart's Desire: A Tribute To Doris Day (Fresh Sound). After too long, a new collection by a magnificent singer. See this Rifftides review for details.

Tom Harrell, Light On (High Note). Another artist who takes his time between releases, the trumpeter and uncompromising composer is worth waiting for. Light On has nine new Harrell tunes, his deep solo explorations, the muscularity of Wayne Escoffery's tenor saxophone and a fine young rhythm section. The intriguing "Sky Life" could capture the kind of attention Harrell achieved eighteen years ago with "Sail Away," his most famous composition.

Logan Richardson, Cerebral Flow (Fresh Sound New Talent). A twenty-seven-year-old Kansas Citian now living in New York, Richardson is an alto and soprano saxophonist with a song-like approach to improvisation, even at his edgiest. He and his equally adventurous quintet colleagues sustain interest through their interaction on ten pieces Richardson composed or, in the cases of "Animated Concept of Being" and "Free the Blues," conjured as urgent pas de deux for himself and drummers Nasheet Waits and Thomas Crane. His "Urban Folk Song" is a highlight. Vibraphonist Mike Pinto, guitarist Mike Moreno and bassist Matthew Brewer, like Richardson representatives of New York's yeasty new downtown jazz scene, function more as equal partners than as sidemen.

Miroslav Vitous, Live in Vienna (MVD Visual, Quantum Leap). Another in the Quantum Leap series featuring bassists in club performance at Vienna's Porgy and Bess. This time, it's Vitous, the Czech bassist who materialized in New York in 1967 and quickly became embedded with leading players in the US jazz scene. He was one of the founders of Weather Report. Now a veteran solo concertizer, his repertoire in this concert reflects his eclecticism with variations on Beethoven, Dvorak, Miles Davis, Victor Young and Jewish music, not to mention a pastiche of opera themes. Pianist Fritz Pauer and drummer John Hollenbeck--Porgy and Bess regulars--support Vitous with their customary attentiveness.

Max Wilk, They're Playing Our Song (Da Capo). Wilk's survey of classic songwriters doesn't have the wisdom and analysis of Alec Wilder's American Popular Song. Still it's a minor classic full of wonderful anecdotes about two dozen of the people who brought you the great American songbook, among them Kern, Gershwin, Berlin, Fields, Mercer, Duke, Rogers and Styne.