Latest CD releases reviewed
MARC COPLAND/RANDY BRECKER
Both/And Nagel Heyer *****
Copland is one of the most distinctive jazz pianists alive, so this meeting with his longtime friend, trumpeter Randy Brecker, raises special expectations. They're realised. The pianist's harmonic sense is sheer poetry, in composition, soloing and comping. Just listen to his responses to Brecker in the coda to the gorgeous I Loves You, Porgy, and their impact on the trumpeter Copland's grasp of solo line and the arc of a performance is also uncanny. They're beautifully backed by Ed Howard (bass) and Victor Lewis (drums). Several pieces - Brecker's Over the Hills and Copland's When the Wind Stops and Both/And - have a deceptively childlike simplicity and grace, but the quartet can groove spectacularly, too, as they do on the brilliant reworking of Lee Morgan's Sidewinder. And I doubt if Brecker has ever played better on record. Sheer pleasure. www.musicconnection.org.uk Ray Comiskey
FLORIAN ROSS
Big Fish & Small Pond Intuition ****
There's a compositional mind at work on this fascinating trio album - no surprise, since Ross is as celebrated a composer as he is a pianist. With the exception of Giant Steps, all the pieces are his; with the help of bassist Dietmar Fuhr and drummer Stéphane Huchard, they allow a gifted trio to produce some striking music. Ross marries some attractive, often deceptively simple lines with an arresting harmonic sense, and the trio seizes the opportunities they present to dialogue with great flexibility and mutual insight. Pieces such as Obvious, Heads Up, Compared to What?, Petit Paul, Madrid and My Address Book are notably unified performances, with the solos and the interaction growing organically out of the material. And it has the ineffable feel of a working group.http://uk.hmboutique.com Ray Comiskey
REUBEN HOCH
Of Recent Time Naim ***
As a programme with works by Rivers, Metheny, Mehldau and Shorter would suggest, this enjoyable trio, led by drummer Hoch, has a contemporary fluidity in its approach to time and harmony. Moreover, the group's most famous member, veteran pianist Don Friedman, has worked with avant gardists such as Ornette Coleman, whose Turnaround is also featured here in perhaps the most open playing on the CD. Despite all this, it's a relatively straight-ahead ensemble, with well-crafted performances embracing a variety of moods: lyrical on Kuhn's Poem for No 15, grooving on Friedman's Flamands, and the pianist leading an exhilarating charge on Shorter's Yes and No. www.thenaimlabel.co.uk Ray Comiskey
