| Label: Plus Loin Catalog: PL4536 Format: CD Billy Harper, saxophone ténor; Eddie Henderson, trompette; David Weiss, trompette; Craig Handy, saxophone alto (1 et 5) George Cables, piano;; Cecil McBee, contrebasse; Billy Hart, batterie; special guest : Azar Lawrence saxophone ténor (4, 6 et 7) et saxophone sopranoComposed by: tracklisting Cast The First Stone | Peacemaker | Looking For The Light | The Seventh Day | Croquet Ballet | Think On Me | The Chief
"Where to begin?" wrote playwright August Wilson, "is among the first questions an artist asks [her-] himself." As inquiries about the creative process go, it was one the prolific dramatist was well acquainted with, even though when pressed he usually answered with a clever feint. "I have always told anyone who asks for my advice to begin anywhere," Wilson offered, "and that beginning will lead them, whether forward or backward, to the place they want to go. That the place where they arrive may be a place they wanted to go to unknowingly or perhaps even unwillingly is the crucible in which many a work of art is fired." It's safe to say that the musicians in The Cookers got together with a pretty good idea of what sonic approach they wanted to pursue, but the fact that the septet consists of seasoned improvisers and jazz soloists introduces an important variable into the equation. Take this album's closer, "The Chief", for example. Trumpeter David Weiss describes it as a "piece for blowing", as was certainly the case when it was written by Harold Mabern at the turn of the '70s for his then-employer Lee Morgan--not coincidentally, one of the Cookers collective's patron saints. (The ensemble's name comes from Night of the Cookers, the recorded trumpet summit between Morgan and Freddie Hubbard staged at Brooklyn's Club La Marchal in 1965.) Here, however, the four-horn front line as well as the opening features by first Azar Lawrence and then Billy Harper set the stage for a reading that was barely imaginable when the piece was composed. Weiss, the Cookers' music director, says the attack is indicative of the "play-hard-and-mean-it" aesthetic the participants swear by. "Most of the musicians in this band have been playing a lot longer than I have, and they've stressed to me that you have to really go for it, to take chances, to have any hope of taking the music to the next level," he says. "If you just do exactly what you know every night, essentially nothing's gonna change. There's always more ground to cover, so why would you want to stand in one place?" One way The Cookers ensure that new life flows through the collective is by reaching back into their catalogs for vibrant pieces that test Weiss' arranging skills. "With great musicians, it's always about making the gig better," he says. "So you're always asking, "What can we do to take this up a notch?' In my mind, since this band is comprised of musicians who have been writing for nearly 40 years, we can continually uncover gems and create sort of a best-of situation." As a result, tenorist Billy Harper, an alumnus of Lee Morgan's last group, checks in with three tunes, including the raw title-track/opener, the churchy "Seventh Day" and "Croquet Ballet", a dynamic waltz-into-funk fantasia that first saw the light of day on Morgan's The Last Session. Two surprisingly different sides of the midtempo ballad are on display in pianist George Cables' "Think On Me" and "Looking For The Light" (Weiss adds: "That could easily have been the name of the album if George hadn't used it for one of his own already."). The final piece, bassist Cecil McBee's "The Peacemaker", is another balladic line, this time with a floaty, straight eight lilt intensified by the way trumpeter Eddie Henderson's muted maneuvers offset drummer Billy Hart's shifts between rim shots, crashing cymbals and high-hat. Craig Handy follows Henderson's feature with an eclectically logical solo on alto that could be a textbook example of that advice once given by August Wilson: Start anywhere, but be ready for experience, inspiration, moxie and brilliance to provide results that are creatively unique.
-K. Leander Williams Price: $26.98 |