Michael Hashim: MultiColoured Blue
With a fine Fats Waller CD under his belt, Hashim has at least equalled that album with another tribute, this time to Billy Strayhorn, whose subtly charged and diverse musical universe he's ideally equipped to explore. A passionate, imaginative and technically gifted alto and soprano saxophonist, he's brilliantly supported here by longtime associates Mike LeDonne (piano), Peter Washington (bass) and Kenny Washington (drums), with the wrap-around warmth of Joe Temperley's magisterial baritone added on four tracks. A well balanced programme includes gorgeous interpretations of little-known gems like Multi-Coloured Blue and Triple Play, and more celebrated pieces like Chelsea Bridge and Just A-Sittin' and A-Rockin'. Conventional, certainly, but superbly crafted and totally committed.
Ray Comiskey
Django Bates: Quiet Nights (Screwgun)
A taste of what's in store for audiences at the Dublin Jazz Week next Thursday comes from pianist and composer Bates, a formidably talented musician who likes to do the unexpected. With his Human Chain quartet - Bates, Iain Bellamy (saxophones), Michael Mondesir (bass) and Martin France (drums) - augmented by singer Josefine Crnholm, he does so here in a manner too intelligent to be anarchic and too witty and funny to be merely shocking. Bates and mates subject songs like Hi lili, hi lo, Over The Rainbow and Speak Low, Solitude and Like Someone In Love to a restrained musical earthquake just a few points up the Richter scale, with Crnholm's delightfully warm singing the epicentre; structural damage abounds, but it's moulded into smiles, surprises and, at times, oddly affecting beauty.
Ray Comiskey