Lee Konitz: Another Shade Of Blue (Blue Note)
More from the acclaimed late 1997 live encounter of altoist Konitz with Brad Mehldau and bassist Charlie Haden underlines the overall quality of this meeting of superior musical minds. On venerable material - a blues, three ballads and a medium tempo standard - their playing is warmly conversational. Most of what structure there is comes from Konitz; he brings his highly original sense of line, time and harmony to bear on a brilliant What's New and Body And Soul, with the rest not far behind, although the blues emerges as - relatively - conventional. Mehldau, challenged, plays well, if at times hesitantly, while Haden is a rock. But Konitz's brittle lyricism, sublimely and astringently expressed, has seldom been better captured.
- Ray Comiskey
Florian Ross: Suite for Soprano Sax and String Orchestra (Naxos)
Composer, arranger and pianist Ross has, with the inspired help of saxophonist Dave Liebman, produced a marriage of jazz and classical music which, in general, works beautifully. Using a string ensemble and jazz quartet, his seven-part suite contains some of the most focused and adventurous writing heard in such a context, underlined by Liebman's uncanny ability to grasp the direction of the material and establish his own personality within it. Standouts include the atonal writing on Part VI, the unity of soloist and ensemble on Parts III and V and an elegiac, through-composed Part [RO ] II. Despite a rather conventional Part IV and a fractious final piece, writing of this calibre is rare in jazz. And it's superbly performed.
- Ray Comiskey