Jazz

This week's jazz releases reviewed

JOACHIM KÜHN-MAJID BEKKAS-RAMÓN LÓPEZ

Out of the Desert ACT ****

This is a remarkable meeting between the perennially avant-garde jazz pianist Joachim Kühn, Moroccan singer/guembri player Majid Bekkas and Spanish percussionist Ramón López, as well as Berber musicians and Benin's virtuoso talking drum player, Kouassi Bessan Joseph. Kühn and Bekkas contributed three pieces each, relatively simple lines for a repetitive, but remarkably accessible, polyrhythmic music. In the process they show how jazz and North African music make eloquent partners. It's groove-based, with the guembri(a stringed instrument like an oud) used much as the bass is used in jazz, and seasoned with Kühn's compelling solos, which constantly surprise and cannily evade resolution. With even the vocals unmistakeably evoking the call and response routines of black American music, the jazz feel is palpable – and persuasive. www.actmusic.com

MIROSLAV VITOUS

Remembering Weather Report ECM ***

What this CD recalls is neither the repertoire nor the electronics of the original Weather Report, but its early credo of group democracy and freedom. Vitous, who wrote all the pieces for this album, was WR's co-founder in 1971, and his virtuosic bass is a strong presence here, especially on the wryly speculative When Dvorák Meets Miles, where he dominates Franco Ambrosetti (trumpet) and Gary Campbell (tenor), though not Gerald Cleaver (drums). These fine players contribute significantly to the Variations on W Shorter(loosely based on Nefertiti) and Variations on Lonely Woman, but it's the guest, the brilliant Michel Portal (bass clarinet) who has the force of personality, with Cleaver, to match Vitous. The Portal-Vitous duet, Surfing With Michel, is a highlight, along with the three-part Semina, a moving and layered tribute to the Weather Report's late Joe Zawinul.

JERRY BERGONZI

Simply Put Savant ****

Bergonzi is a formidable, authoritative and inspirational hard bop tenor, tempered by a wide range of influences, among them Joe Henderson, Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and Hank Mobley. On this well-crafted set he's joined by Dave Santoro (bass) and Andrea Michelutti (drums) from his first Savant album, Tenor of the Times, and Bruce Barth (piano). Santoro was also on the second, The Tenorist, so there's plenty of shared experience to hand. But Bergonzi also ensures that what's familiar in other ways offers no undiluted comfort; a standard such as Come Fly With Meis "adjusted" to keep soloists on their toes, while an oldie, Out of Nowhere, is given a real makeover. His originals, particularly the harmonically looped Wipper Snapper, the haunting Crossing the Naeffand a blues, Transphybian, separate the wheat from the chaff. There is no chaff here. www.jazzdepot.com