By Nathaniel Friedman

Let’s be frank about it: Joe Lovano is the tenor saxophonist of the last ten years, a major figure who belongs in the pantheon alongside Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, and Joe Henderson. His instantly recognizable sound--swirling, inquisitive, and deceptively gruff--has managed to bring something new to the tradition, in an age when many people had long ago closed the books on it. Consciously or not, Lovano owned up to the mantle of greatness with 1998’s Trio Fascination: Edition One. The standard sax-bass-drums trio has long been the proving ground for tenor saxophonists (second only, perhaps, to an interpretation of the standard “Body and Soul”), dating back to Coltrane’s “Chasin’ the Trane” and Sonny Rollins’ Live at the Village Vanguard; Lovano had already explored the format on record, with the fine Sounds of Joy. But it was Lovano’s bristling workouts with heavyweights Dave Holland and Elvin Jones (who has held down the drum chair on an alarming number of historic trio sessions) that made his legacy explicit.

Now, with Flights of Fancy: Trio Fascination, Edition Two, Lovano wants us to know that there’s much more to his trio conception than the standard formula.

“Playing in trio format has been a part of my development through the years,” he says, “exploring different musics with different personalities. There’s a lot of magic and mystery there, a chance for dialogue and discussion.”

Flights of Fancy certainly, as Lovano puts it, “take[s] the listener on a journey.” The album finds him working with four separate trios, each with a different configuration of instruments and a distinct musical personality. Selections with bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Idris Muhammad (his regular working band, both of who will be on hand for his Philadelphia appearance) are bracing and propulsive; the unlikely line-up of Lovano, pianist Kenny Werner, and jazz harmonica maven Toots Thielemans combines for shambling, atmospheric takes on, among other things, Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes” and the treacherous chord changes of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” Flights of Fancy also features famously adventurous players like trumpeter Dave Douglas, drummer Joey Baron, and bassist Mark Dresser, whose presence brings out Lovano’s mischievious side. And while the first Trio Fascination found him employing an array of woodwinds, including the obscure alto clarinet, the more recent record also features Lovano on drums, gongs, and taking up the traditional role of the bass on bass clarinet.

Experimenting with unconventional trios is nothing new for Lovano. In a sense, his longstanding trio with guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Paul Motian serves as the backdrop for this record. “That trio is one of my main inspirations for a project like this,” he says, “Every time I play, I try to create that intimacy. That group gives me the confidence to relax and create moods, not just notes. To make it more than a technical thing, to get some feeling in it.” But Lovano also describes the trio in general as “the heart and core of most of my projects.” Indeed, Lovano observes that, even on the heavily orchestrated Rush Hour, “the bass, tenor and drums are consistent throughout the recording. The ensembles weave around the core trio, textures floating throughout. . . they’re written around how we improvised as a trio.” For him, the trio is also the basic building block of Miles Davis’ second quintet, arguably the biggest influence on jazz’s last twenty years. He points out that, with pianist Herbie Hancock laying out fairly often, the group could easily be conceived of as three trios: trumpet-bass-drums, tenor-bass-drums, and piano-bass-drums.

In making Flights of Fancy, Lovano also looked back to some of the more unorthodox trios of the past, such as Lester Young’s early forties group with Nat King Cole on piano and bassist Red Callender, a group that, in Lovano’s eyes, developed “a more orchestral kind of dialogue, exploring the same songs with a different kind of feeling.” This idea certainly appealed to Lovano, who had several of Flights of Fancy’s groups record the same compositions. “It’s not just what we’re playing but how weíre playing it,” he says, “it’s about letting the personalities of the musicians dictate how you’re playing, not the tune. When I played ‘On Giant Steps’ [based on “Giant Steps”] with Toots, it was the romantic, beautiful tune that it is; with Idris and Cameron, it was more straight-ahead.”

Flights of Fancy is something of a departure from the plush, large ensemble bop of Lovano’s last record, the Grammy-winning 52nd Street Themes. In fact, he finds it downright funny when I propose that this one might win him another Grammy. But, Lovano says, “I wanted people to hear me play naturally, the way I do every day. I play in open settings like this all the time.” As he puts it, “in certain clubs, every night it’s a different world of music. . . anything can happen when you try to create music together.”