Endurance JLP ****

The veterans Jimmy (tenor/ soprano) and Al "Tootie" Heath (drums) head a quartet with the youthful Jeb Patton (piano) and David Wong (bass) on a good mainstream album. That the band is a working group helps, along with the composing talent and canny improvising nous of Jimmy and the unobtrusive way Al knits the rhythm section together. The unit locks tightly behind each soloist, and the results are unusually buoyant. Both Jimmy Heath, a mix of bop and elements of Coltrane, and Patton, a deft user of contrasts of register, chords and single note lines, are well-matched, particularly on Heath's Changes, his blues Wall to Wall,and Rio Dawn, and on Patton's Dusk in the City.The entire band excels on Autumn In New York.Mainstream is an unfashionable genre that stubbornly refuses to disappear, but this is a superior sample of the idiom. See jazzlegacyproductions.com