Adam Rudolph's Moving Pictures: Dream Garden

They used to say that everyone who bought the first Velvet Underground record must have started a band. In time, we may come to realize that every jazz musician who moved into the area of World Music first caught the bug from Don Cherry's Mu, Brown Rice, or any of the other number of globally-minded records Cherry issued after he moved away from the post-bop free jazz of the Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler quartets.

With his group Moving Pictures, percussionist Adam Rudolph (a Cherry alum) brings together several internationally-aware musicians to extend the tradition pioneered by Cherry. You would think Rudolph were a cornet or flautist himself, considering the generous space his compositions offer to Graham Haynes and Ned Rothenberg. From track to track, the horns ride on top of the steady, dipping rhythms of Brahim Frigbane's oud ("Walking the Curve ) or the assaultive polyrhythms originating from Hamid Drake's trap set ("Oshogbo ). Guitarist Kenny Wessel takes his place next to Haynes and Rothenberg, chopping along with the forward-driving momentum of Shanir Blumenkranz' bass ("Cousin of the Moon ) or supplying a repeated lick to support a Haynes solo ("A Vision of Pure Delight ).

The music on Dream Garden does not, however, entirely derive from the music of Don Cherry, whose work had an ethereal quality while, at the same time, generating the feeling that the instruments in play were strange and exotic and hands-on. By now, the instrumentation Rudolph employs isn't that unfamiliar and the recording process tends to smooth out the rough edges. But Rudolph listens to his own muse; she speaks with several different accents in a variety of languages and Rudolph doesn't need a translator.

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