This week's jazz CDs reviewed

MICHAEL GARRICK

Lady of the Aurian Wood – A Magic Life of Duke JAZA ****

Although his music has many other dimensions, pianist/composer Michael Garrick's great loves are Duke Ellington and Bill Evans. So this rewarding big-band album, in the tradition of which the Duke was the peak, is a heartfelt homage to Ellington's influence, as well as a reminder of Garrick's own individuality working in that lineage. The writing is packed with incident, superbly voiced, with deft counterpoint and thematic development, yet never cluttered and always with a sense of direction; clarity and colour are held in balance. The sheer, focused variety of Labyrinth; the imaginative mix of the past and the contemporary in Empty Heart Blues; the diaphanous, almost Strayhorn-like mood of the title track; and the combination of solo instruments and ensemble in the celebratory Sanctusare as well crafted as anything Garrick has written in his long and distinguished career. www.jazzscript.co.uk

ZOE RAHMAN

Live Manushi Records ***

Zoe Rahman is an exceptional pianist whose style, notwithstanding her mixed jazz and Bengali heritage, has no readily discernable models. A percussive player with the ability to take the material anywhere she wants in terms of line, harmony and rhythm, she is the dominant voice here – though the live balance does Oli Hayhurst's bass no favours. But in this tight trio, even Gene Calderazzo's power drumming is reactive. Yet, amid the deceptively quixotic inventiveness, Rahman's solos have a persuasive flow, amply demonstrated on The Strideand Tuang Guru, both by Abdullah Ibrahim, and Joanne Brackeen's quirky Friday 13thand Egyptian Tune Dance(are Ibrahim and Brackeen remote influences?). This singular talent is joined on two tracks by her clarinetist brother, Idris, including the melancholy Mucche Jaoa Dinguliby the late Bengali singer/composer, Hemant Mukherjee. www.zoerahman.com

HENRI TEXIER

Love Songs Reflexions Label Bleu ***

A great bassist, Texier has an enviably cohesive quartet with son Sébastien (alto/clarinets), Manu Codjia (guitar) and Christophe Marguet (drums). Its cohesiveness is clear in this contrasting, perhaps even odd, mixture of standards delivered straight and improvised within that framework, and five free group improvisations. The connections in the mix, if there are any, are not obvious, but the band’s five spontaneous collaborations display generally fresh and coherent mutual responsiveness, although Dark Song is just a fragment on a rhythmic pattern, and the wild À Vif succumbs to excited self-indulgence. On the standards the band is so respectful that a slight sense of put-on is never banished entirely, despite some impressive work by both Texiers, with Sébastien sometimes echoing Art Pepper and Lee Konitz. www.label-bleu.com