Latest CD releases reviewed
MANU KATCHÉ
Neighbourhood ECM ****
Uniting threequarters of trumpeter Tomasz Stanko's quartet (Stanko, pianist Marcin Wasilewski, bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz) with tenor saxophonist Jan Garbarek, under drummer Katché has produced a real charmer. Stanko, Garbarek and Wasilewski are utterly dissimilar, distinctive and unfettered melodists for whom Katché's compositions, with their relatively little harmonic movement (or virtually none), are meat and drink. Piano, bass and drums make a marriage of true minds with no impediments, while Stanko and Garbarek contribute highly vocalised, charged improvisations, with Stanko a superb judge of how to reinforce the dramatic and emotional shape of each peformance with interjections that go beyond mere soloing. Insinuatingly lovely in its unassuming way. www.musicconnection.org.uk Ray Comiskey
RAY BARRETTO
Time Was - Time Is O+ Music ****
Veteran conguero and bandleader Barretto effects a crisply exciting mix of his Afro-Caribbean and jazz roots with this successful amalgam of hard bop with latin rhythms, taken from a somewhat more contemporary viewpoint. The arrangements make impressive use of the opportunities offered by a splendid front line in Joe Magnarelli (trumpet/ flugelhorn) and Myron Walden (alto), backed by a coruscating rhythm section in which Barretto and pianist Robert Rodriguez are prominent. Attractive originals by the band's members also help, but there's a constantly imaginative deployment of the group's resources, notably on the long, traditional Motherless Child (a surprising choice for a latin group), which sustains interest and provokes the high-calibre soloists. www.harmonia.mundi.com Ray Comiskey
JUNE CHRISTY
Ballads for Night People Capitol Jazz ****
Although I've never been an unalloyed fan of the late misty Miss Christy, this reissue does bring back one of the iconic albums of her late-1950s heyday. In an oddly compelling way she's very much of her time, a singer with a sophisticated ear for artful, sometimes arty, lyrics, but she was jazz to the core, even in the carefully considered contexts provided for her here. Surrounded by the then cream of West Coast musicians - players like husband Bob Cooper, Frank Rosolino, Bud Shank, Buddy Collette, Mel Lewis, Stan Levey and, on five tracks from a little over a year later, Joe Gordon and Shelly Manne - she gives a recital as interesting for the rarities she picks as it is for what she brings to familiar pieces by Ellington, Rodgers and Weill. Ray Comiskey
