Dave Douglas: Wandering Souls (Winter & Winter)
Douglas's recent visit with his Tiny Bell Trio will have alerted fans to a major, if sometimes maverick, talent, and a group which is like nothing else in jazz. This, their latest album, isn't all sweetness and light, but in its confidence, daring, wit, instrumental brilliance and at times astonishing group interaction it is, at its best, rather special. Douglas has welded disparate influences - free jazz, Balkan, European classical, as well as those of fellow trumpeters Miles Davis and Booker Little - into a voice which is uncategorisable yet instantly recognisable. The material he composed and arranged works best; the ballads are gloriously individual and the faster pieces remarkable for the interplay with guitarist Brad Shepik and Jim Black, by any measure a truly great drummer - and for Douglas's own playing.
Ray Comiskey
Sonny Criss: Rockin' in Rhythm (Prestige OJC)
Altoist Criss was a passionate, blues-drenched Parker disciple who deserved wider acclaim than he got. But by the time he took his own life in 1977 after a cancer diagnosis, a series of exceptional small group recordings for Muse, Xanadu and Prestige had cemented his reputation among musicians as one of the finest in the bop idiom. This is one of those albums - not quite the best; Eddie Green, funky enough, is no match for other pianists like Hampton Hawes, Barry Harris, Walter Davis or Dolo Coker on previous sessions - but close. By the time it was made in 1968, Criss had absorbed a touch of Coltrane to give further edge to his approach, yet the basic style remained intact, summed up in the title track and in a version of Eleanor Rigby which is a fiery, evangelical musical sermon from the mount of bop.
Ray Comiskey