JAZZ

Ray Brown: "The Sax Players" Telarc CD-83388 Dial-a-track code: 1531

Lee Konitz meets Jimmy Giuffre Verve 527 780-2 Dial-a-track code: 1641

On paper, a parade of guests - albeit with an experienced rhythm section to back them - should be more of a miss than a hit. But Ray Brown's splendid trio, with Benny Green (piano) and drummer Greg Hutchinson, is flexible and sympathetic enough to cope with a history lesson in jazz saxophone on this fine 1995 session. It's given by veterans Benny Carter and Stanley Turrentine, the middle generation of Ralph Moore and Joe Lovano, and young lion, Joshua Redman, all of whom know jazz didn't simply begin with John Coltrane or Dave Liebman. What thus emerges is a surprisingly good exploration of the jazz repertoire, with each guest joining the trio for two tracks in a fruitful meeting on a broad middle ground. It works.

There's another history lesson on the double-CD set of the iconoclastic Konitz and Giuffre, which features four rare LPs - Lee Konitz With Strings, Ralph Burns's Free Forms, Giuffre's Piece For Clarinet and String Orchestra/Mobiles, and Lee Konitz Meets Jimmy Giuffre. They're mostly from the late 1950s, with the first three exemplifying the so-called "Third Stream" attempted marriage of jazz and classical idioms, and the last, the cool West Coast manner. Konitz is in superb form on his own Strings album and, with less chance to shine on Burns's slighter effort, adds a much needed astringency to the mistitled Free Forms. The real meat is in the remaining pair. Giuffre is the perennial avant gardist; his orchestral album, with his distinctive clarinet out front, still sounds personal and fresh, while Konitz dominates everyone else on the beautifully written octet meeting with Giuffre (which has Bill Evans on piano).

Dave McKenna/Joe Temperley: "Sunbeam and Thundercloud" Concord CCD-4703

Dial-a-track code: 1751

Alan Barnes/Brian Lemon: "Play Harold Arlen" Zephyr ZECD7 Dial-a-track code: 1861

The late Ronnie Scott used to claim "some of my best friends are duos". If he heard both these 1995 pairings he would surely have been impressed. By any measure, they're outstanding examples of mainstream jazz. The piano-baritone lineup on the first is unusual, but it was tested at the annual Aspen, Colorado jazz party the previous year and worked so well that Concord got McKenna and Temperley into the studio. They're glorious together, Temperley's sonorously malleable tone contrasting with McKenna's ringing piano, while both are gifted improvisors and McKenna has a left hand that is time personified; Temperley, possibly the finest living baritone, also plays persuasive bass clarinet and soprano on this delightful session.

Just as remarkable is the pairing of young Alan Barnes (alto/clarinet) with the great veteran pianist, Brian Lemon. Barnes is quirky, melodic, ferociously quick-witted, with a technique to match, and Lemon is one of those men - like the late Zoot Sims - who is the epitome of consistency, unfazed by anything. Their foray into the beguiling world of Harold Arlen is intriguing because Lemon combines firmness with flexibility, grounding Barnes's flights of imagination without tying them down. And they prove, not incidentally, that inventiveness is more a question of ability and attitude than of style.

Robert Mazurek/Eric Alexander:

"Green & Blue" HEP CD2067 Dial-a-track code: 1971

Jesse Davis: "From Within" Concord CCD-4727 Dial-a-track code: 2081

The hard-bop lineage continues to thrive, with a modern accent adding to the flavour in the hands of saxophonist Davis and trumpeter Mazurek. Recorded last year, From Within has a lineup like a jazz peerage, old and new - Hank Jones, Ron Carter, Lewis Nash, Nicholas Payton and Davis - with high quality soloists afforded a stimulating framework, mostly good originals by Davis, garnished with a few standards. Altoist Davis, a personal amalgam of Stitt, Adderley and Parker, gets better with each release; this, his fifth on Concord, is the best yet. As for Mazurek, the Messengers' message is the key to his approach, and the quintet - with Eric Alexander's uncompromising tenor - is the kind of bristling, passionate jazz this implies, with more subtlety than the style is given credit for. It works, too.