Ronan Guilfoyle: "Devsirme"(IMC)
This is a brilliant piece of work, a triumph for the performers and, above all, for Guilfoyle, who wrote and arranged all of the material. In a sextet packed with some of the best young jazzmen in the country - Brendan Doyle (soprano/clarinet), Michael Buckley (tenor/flute), Karl Ronan (trombone), Guilfoyle (bass guitar) and his brother, Conor (drums) - he has pulled off one of the most difficult and certainly the rarest of jazz feats, creating a context in which the structured has an air of spontaneity and the spontaneous seems simultaneously disciplined by the material and the dynamics of group performance. Guilfoyle's writing is hugely inventive and the playing is frankly virtuosic, with Buckley the most impressive soloist, and Conor Guilfoyle's drumming a key element. But such is the unity wrought by the composer/arranger it is impossible to conceive the sextet minus a single voice.
Ray Comiskey
Michel Petrucciani: "Both Worlds"(Dreyfus)
With this album, recorded in New York last August and due for release on December 1st, pianist Petrucciani moves into what is for him one of the more conventional contexts of his career. Basically, this is a straight-ahead sextet date for which he composed the individual pieces, which were then arranged by another member of the band, the great valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer; the others are Flavio Boltro (trumpet), Stefano Di Battista (saxophones), Anthony Jackson (bass guitar) and Steve Gadd (drums). As soloists, it's left to Brookmeyer and Petrucciani to provide the main interest, with Petrucciani clearly the more inspired; the energy and sheer wealth of melodic invention he can call on, as well as the plangent expressiveness of his sometimes heavy touch, remain his principal attributes.
Ray Comiskey
Art Farmer: "Listen To Art Farmer And The Orchestra" (Verve)
Another composer/arranger, Oliver Nelson, devised big band settings of standards and jazz originals for Art Farmer on this seductively engaging 1962 album. Using flugelhorn throughout, Farmer turns in one of the best-recorded displays of his long career. As the only featured soloist fronting a band containing the likes of Ernie Royal, Clark Terry, Snooky Young and Rolf Ericson in the trumpet section alone, as well as a gaggle of New York's Finest in the trombone, reed and rhythm sections, he was bound to shape up. But he was also gifted challenging arrangements by the sometimes critically under-rated Nelson, which shook him out of a tendency to function within a relatively narrow emotional and dynamic range. And material such as Billy Strayhorn's Rain Check and John Coltrane's then new Naima, also pushed him into fertile pastures. The orchestra, not incidentally, is breathtakingly good.
Ray Comiskey
