This week's Jazz CDs reviewed
SCOTTISH NATIONAL JAZZ ORCHESTRA
Rhapsody in Blue Live Spartacus★★★★★
In tackling Gershwin's perennial, tenor saxophonist Tommy Smith took it into the jazz arena and rescored it for a standard eight brass, five reeds and four rhythm big band. He also reworked and re-ordered the original's sequence, and introduced a long closing section based on Gershwin's I Got Rhythmchanges. Radical though the alterations are, they keep the original's spirit; the imaginatively referenced main themes are unifying elements in a performance more than three times the length of the original. It's a triumph for Smith, who is magisterial both as orchestrator and player. Other bright spots are pianist Brian Kellock's great links, an array of fine soloists, and the SNJO's aplomb with a demanding score that embraces blues, Cuban rhythm, stride, and some wry humour amid the high seriousness. In style, it's closest to the Buddy Rich big band; more to the point, there are no longueurs. www.spartacusrecords.com
ANDY SHEPPARD
Movements in Colour ECM★★★★
This is a rebuke to complication for complication's sake. Sheppard, who wrote the music, leads a select, stellar group of John Parricelli (acoustic and electric guitars), Eivind Aarset (guitar and electronics), Arild Andersen (bass and electronics) and Kuljit Bhamra (tabla and percussion) through a joyous, sophisticated demonstration of the virtues of melody and simplicity. It marries Indian and western elements in a blend of line, texture and rhythm as consistently rewarding as the fresh, intimate interplay the cultural-boundary blurring generates. On tenor and soprano Sheppard is in effulgent form, soloing with logic and lyricism on La Tristesse Du Roi, floating, exquisitely laid-back, over the rich colours of Nave Nave Moe, and eloquently simple on the melancholy Ballarina. Andersen, too, is outstanding in a quintet in which the whole is even greater than the sum of its considerable parts.
JOE LOVANO
Folk Art Blue Note★★★★
This affair joins old hands Lovano (tenor, alto, taragato, clarinet, autochrome) and James Weidman (piano) and young guns Esperanza Spalding (bass) and drummer- percussionists Otis Brown III and Francisco Mela. It's an exciting combination, particularly in its responsiveness to the diversity of Lovano's music: The harmonic ambivalence of Folk Art, the inside/outside flexibility of Us Fiveand Ettenroask questions different from the (relatively) straight-ahead Powerhouse, for example. And they combine the group's feel for openness and structure on two exceptional rubato performances, Wild Beautyand the constantly modulating Song for Judi. An occasional discursiveness may be as much due to the band's willingness to take chances as anything else, though the case for two drummers in a small group is unproven.
