By Jennifer Odell | Published August 2017
The first song on Live From Jazz At The Bistro, the latest roller coaster ride from trumpeter Sean Jones and his now 12-year-old quartet—pianist Orrin Evans, drummer Obed Calvaire and bassist Luques Curtis—feels like a microcosm of the entire album. Titled “Art’s Variable,” it’s an up-and-down adventure that boasts thrilling, heady highs and warm, full-bodied figures in nearly equal doses.
Written with Art Blakey and John Coltrane in mind, the tune shifts repeatedly from mellow to fiery as Jones and Evans take turns executing galvanic assaults that propel the energy through repeated modes of tension and release. It took me more than one spin to get inside those stratospheric leaps, constructed as they are with insistent piano refrains that border on strident and high-register wails from Jones. But as the album unfolds, my ear came to relish the pattern of challenge and reward.
Highlights include the relaxed and woozy “Doc’s Holiday,” one of four tracks featuring saxophonist Brian Hogans, which teases out a playful melody through hide-and-seek horn lines. Jones and Evans toy with rhythm and reg-ister on “The Ungentrified Blues,” which ends shortly after a coy-sounding Jones unleashes a sustained warm purr. By the time he gets to his soaring New Orleans- and gospel-inspired “BJ’s Tune,” a new kind of intensity has taken over. The track is all grace and soul until Calvaire’s hummingbird-like drum work urges a return to the top of the roller coaster.
Live From Jazz At The Bistro: Art’s Variable; Lost, Then Found; Piscean Dichotomy; Doc’s Holiday; The Ungentrified Blues; Prof; BJ’s Tune. (64:02)
Personnel: Sean Jones, trumpet, flugelhorn; Obed Calvaire, drums (2, 3, 6); Luques Curtis, bass; Orrin Evans, piano; Brian Hogans, alto saxophone, soprano saxophone (2, 3, 4, 6); Mark Whitfield Jr., drums (1, 4, 5, 7).
