JAZZ

Michael Garrick: "Parting Is Such" JAZA 3 (76 mins) Dial-a-rock code: 1641

Mike Carr: "Bebop From The East Coast" Birdland MC596 (61 mins) Dial-a-track code: 1751

Magnificent is the word for pianist/ composer/arranger Michael Garrick's new CD. A further excursion by the same trio - completed by Dave Green (bass) and Alan Jackson (drums) - that made the savoury A Lady In Waiting, it is, if anything even better than its predecessor. In terms of style, its historical antecedents are the great Bill Evans trios, where performances were three-parts musical conversations, not simply piano with rhythm. And Garrick, though clearly influenced by Evans, is a more assertive pianist with, perhaps, an even wider harmonic palette. Certainly, he is his own man and, with his colleagues, conducts a musical discourse on his and their terms, not anyone else's different folks, different strokes.

At times the level of interplay is astonishingly intimate; Sno Peas Brothers Of The Bottom Row, Royal Prerogative and Goodbye Dad are wonderful examples of the way Garrick, Green and Jackson respond to each other. The group's emotional range is considerable, too. Garrick's innately poetic spirit doesn't rule out performances where the sheer drive recalls the kind of energy (and technical command) that someone like the late Lennie Tristano could summon up. There are bonuses in the presence, on one track each, of soprano saxophonist Don Rendell (logical and inventive on Song Of The Elms) and violinist Michael Garrick (lovely toned and almost vocal on Here, There And Everywhere).

Pianist Mike Carr's bop is a first time on CD for The Emcee Five, a near-legendary group in early-60s Newcastle which included his brother, Ian, on trumpet and a fine tenor, Gary Cox. This is archetypal hop, bursting with vitality, talent and ideas; it's a cliche to say it comes across still as absolutely fresh, but it does. The sound is comfortable, if a trifle rough, but the music needs no indulgence.

Nicholas Payton: "Gumbo Nouveau" Verve 531 199-2 (57 mins) Dial-a-track code: 1861 Sonny Still: "In Style" Muse 5228 (37 mins) Dial-a-track code: 1971 Rickey Woodard: "The Silver Strut" Concord CCD-4716 (65 mins) Dial-a-track code: 2081 Randy Sandke: "Calling All Cats" Concord CCD-4717 (64 mins)

Dial-a-track code: 2191

New Orleans trumpeter Payton has produced his best release yet by combining something of the modal approach of the early Blue Note Herbie Hancock with material associated with the traditional jazz of his home town. Unlikely though this sounds, it works, not only because of the thought he's put into the project, but also because he's such an impressive trumpeter. And the basic group around him, including Jesse Davis (alto), Tim Warfield (tenor) and a fine rhythm section, is, like him, not hung-up on the historical connections. Recorded last November, it breaks no new ground, but shows again the continuing vibrancy of the post-bop idiom established by Hancock and Miles Davis.

Sonny Stitt's 1981 date is a first time on CD for one of the last sessions he made. It's also one of his finest. Backed by Barry Harris, George Duvivier and Jimmy Cobb, he's in sublime form, playing mostly tenor.

It says much for tenor Rickey Woodard that he doesn't sound anticlimactic after the masterful Stitt. As with Payton, this is Woodard's best release yet. Magisterially backed by Cedar Walton and sharing the front line with the unjustly little-known trumpeter, Oscar Brashear, he also has the benefit of John Clayton (bass) and Jeff Hamilton (drums). Recorded late last year, it's a thoughtful blowing session - good frameworks, good players and good form.

Randy Sandke's latest, from last December, is more evidence of a basically mainstream trumpeter with much wider interests than the pigeonhole implies. In jazz, this extends from Bix and Louis, through the swing era, to hop; as for other sources, there's even a piece here by the medieval composer, Machaut. But this eclecticism doesn't obscure the jazz core - swinging, mainstream/hop by an excellent sextet/octet.