Latest CD releases reviewed

MIKE WESTBROOK
Celebration Universal
****

Self-taught composer/pianist Westbrook burst onto the late-1960s British jazz scene with this stunning big band album. Now reissued as part of Universal's Impressed series, it's still astonishing in its power, aggression and kaleidoscopic changes of mood, ranging over a harmonically liberated modal approach and incorporating freely improvised sections with enormous flexibility. Influenced by Mingus and - though it's not obvious - Ellington, Westbrook achieved a balance between structure and freedom, notably on the superb Awakening and Image, which allowed his exceptional players, among them saxophonists John Surman (who co-composed the music) and Mike Osborne and trombonist Malcolm Griffiths, to express themselves creatively. Remarkable, raw and enduringly impressive. But get a magnifying glass to read the sleeve notes. Ray Comiskey

SONNY CRISS
The Lost Recordings Lonehill Jazz
***

These "lost" recordings are two live sessions, one of which captures Criss in five-star form in drummer Buddy Rich's quintet at Birdland in the mid-1950s, when Criss had the elements of his mature, searing, blues-drenched, highly mobile, Parker-inspired style in place. The sound quality is tolerable and Rich and Criss clearly spark each other, helped by the straight-ahead bop piano of Kenny Drew and overshadowing the forthright but capable trombone of Ole Hansen. The second session is an early-1950s concert in LA, with better sound and a stellar front line of trumpeter Joe Newman, trombonist Bennie Green and tenor Lockjaw Davis which finds Criss in crowd-pleasing mode, passionate and quick-fingered, and in need of a sense of what to leave out. But with Rich he's outstanding and almost at his best. www.musiconnection@aol.com Ray Comiskey

MARILYN CRISPELL
Storyteller ECM
***

Pianist and composer Crispell has made some exceptional trio albums in her time and, if this isn't one of them, it does continue in the pensive, lyrical vein of recent years. But if she is a marvellous free player, albeit with one ear on harmony, her playing here is, at times, meandering and indeterminate. With a plethora of slow pieces, it's not always helped by drummer Paul Motian's obsession with filling in every space, at times abhorring a vacuum of silence to the point of bizarreness. Nevertheless, when the trio - completed by the excellent bassist, Mark Helias - really clicks, there are some memorable examples of group interplay. Perhaps significantly, the finest performances are also the longest; Crispell's So Far, So Near and Helias's Limbo, for instance, have a definite character which enhances their beauty and persuasively influences the trio's playing. musiconnection@aol.com Ray Comiskey