Jason Moran: Soundtrack to Human Motion (Blue Note)

There may be traces of Andrew Hill and McCoy Tyner in pianist Jason Moran's playing, but they're just part of the language absorbed. Moran has his own thing to say with it, dominating as composer and performer this exceptional new release, with a conception both fresh and firmly rooted. Paradoxically, it allows performers as disparate as saxophonist Greg Osby, Stefon Harris (vibes), Lonnie Plaxico (bass) and Eric Harland (drums) the freedom to participate fully in the musical journeys he creates for them. The degree of rhythmic, harmonic and linear flexibility thus reconciled with structure - at times blurring the distinction between soloist and ensemble - is remarkable, whether in duo, trio, quartet or quintet settings. This is music which somehow contrives to reconcile surprise with inevitability.

By Ray Comiskey

Shelly Manne: The Gambit: Contemporary OJC

Drummer Shelly Manne's late 1950s quintet, with Stu Williamson (trumpet) and Charlie Mariano (alto) backed by Russ Freeman, Monty Budwig and the leader, was together for two years when they made this album. It shows; this was a tight group, nuanced and beautifully integrated, well capable of handling the rhythmic and structural demands of Mariano's eponymous four-part suite and making them sound natural and unforced. At the same time, given soloists of the calibre of Mariano, Freeman and Williamson (in particularly ebullient mode), all that was needed was the chance to let them stretch out. The suite does restrict them somewhat, but when it - and the remaining three pieces that complete this attractive reissue - permit space to blow, the performances take wing.

By Ray Comiskey