The latest releases reviewed
MÉTIER
Cascade
IMC
****
Métier - Paul Williamson (trumpet/flugelhorn), Michael Buckley (tenor), Justin Carroll (piano), Ronan Guilfoyle (bass) and Seán Carpio (drums) - is a bit special. The front line of Williamson and Buckley is a class act, Carroll has produced his most mature recorded work yet, Carpio is magnificent and Guilfoyle the essential fulcrum. With demanding originals, the group draws creative sustenance from the almost wilful complexities of Cascade and Skimming, serves the austere beauty of the (partly) through-composed Hymn and plays with flexibility and fire. And, behind the band's uncompromising energy, the potential for monotony (in unison statements and successive solos, for example) is frequently tempered by deftly unobtrusive writing and arranging. It's early days for them, but the bar is set high and already they sound like a real band. RAY COMISKEY
PENDULUM
Live at the Village Vanguard
Mosaic Select
****
Though Pendulum lasted one magical week in 1978 and left just these 11 performances, only three of which were issued, it was a stellar group. Dave Liebman (tenor/soprano), Randy Brecker (trumpet), Richie Beirach (piano), Frank Tusa (bass) and Al Foster (drums) were at New York's cutting edge and totally familiar with each other. In these live performances, they brilliantly married the freedoms achieved by Coltrane and others to the rigour of hard bop - a rare feat, seldom pulled off so well. The music is full of a carpe-diem excitement and a sense of discovery mixed with structural nous. Liebman and Brecker, superbly backed by the rhythm section, consistently sustain interest over very long performances on three CDs. Familiar material - standards, and originals such as Footprints, Solar, Blue Bossa and Impressions - reinforces appreciation of their achievement. www.mosaicrecords.com RAY COMISKEY
MICHAEL GARRICK
Gigs
Jazz Academy
****
These aural snapshots of a working life come from various concerts in the 1970s and 1980s. Private recordings of surprisingly consistent sound quality, they were made when Garrick's debt to Bill Evans was deeper than it is now. It's most evident in marvellous solo piano explorations of I Can't Get Started and Turn Out The Stars (Evans wrote both the latter and the opening Peri's Scope, heard in a delightful trio performance). But Garrick, in buoyantly orchestral form, clearly had his own thing going. His originals - Prayer, in which the performance unfolds with an almost Bach-like inexorability, and the propulsively grooving Fairies Of Oneiros - are just two of several examples of brilliantly shaped musical storytelling. Bassists Paul Moylan and, especially, Dave Green, with drummers Alan Jackson and Trevor Tomkins, provide thoroughly simpatico support. www.jazzscript.co.uk RAY COMISKEY
