Recent Listening In Brief

James Hall, Lattice (OutsideIn Music)

As I may have mentioned no more than a hundred times, it is impossible to keep up with the flow of new albums that keep coming even as we continue to hear claims that jazz is dying. The fact that jazz is not dying doesn’t mean that there is plenty of gainful employment for jazz musicians. There is not, and probably never has been since the swing era, if then. Plenty of good players can’t find enough work to make a living without second incomes.

I don’t know whether the trombonist and composer James Hall (pictured) also works outside of music, but his new album, Lattice,  speaks well of his achievement in it.  Hall’s intersecting lines for the instruments do the title justice. He is a native of Nebraska who lives in New York City. His album features an impressive quintet playing five of Hall’s compositions and Joe Henderson’s “Black Narcissus.” The other band members are flutist Jamie Baum, pianist Deanna Witkowski, bassist Tom DiCarlo, drummer Alan Mednard and guest alto saxophonist Sharel Cassity. In a video released at nearly the same time as the CD, Victor Gould is the pianist, with Petros Klampanis on bass.  Here is Hall’s “Gaillardia.”

More Recent Listening In Brief to come soon.