Prime
Album ∙ Bop ∙ 2023
Following up their eponymous 2018 debut, bassist Christian McBride and his monster quartet New Jawn keep to a similar strategy, playing originals by the band plus intriguing tunes by canonical figures. Tenor saxophonist Marcus Strickland comes out of the gate on bass clarinet for McBride’s “Head Bedlam,” changing function seamlessly as he doubles the funky bassline and joins trumpeter Josh Evans on the melody. With an impressive command of that unwieldy yet warm and expressive axe, Strickland returns to bass clarinet as well on drummer Nasheet Waits’ ethereal “Moonchild” and McBride’s abstract “Lurkers.”
McBride looks to historical models of the “chordless” quartet (i.e., no piano), none more relevant than Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins. “The Good Life,” which Coleman unveiled on his orchestral album Skies of America and then reinvented with Pat Metheny as a bonus track on Song X, gets a Rollins-esque calypso feel, allowing the Evans/Strickland front line to dig deep. Rollins’ “East Broadway Rundown,” from the tenor icon’s 1967 album of that name, serves as a rousing finale. Evans follows his own “Dolphy Dust” with a fire-breathing performance of Larry Young’s “Obsequious,” drawing on the influence of the great Woody Shaw, who recorded the tune in 1965.
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