Roy Campbell: Akhenaten Suite

A long time collaborator of William Parker, Campbell is one of the luminaries of the NYC free jazz firmament, whose associations stretch from Rashied Ali to John Zorn and almost everyone else in between. Blending his violin into the front line is Campbell's old Bronx buddy Billy Bang, alongside vibraharpist Bryan Carrott, underpinned by drummer Zen Matsuura, harping back to earlier versions of the Pyramid Trio, and the increasingly ubiquitous Hilliard Greene on bass. The Akhenaten Suite is one of three commissions by Arts for Arts Inc premiered at the 2007 Vision Festival, with remaining sessions by William Parker and Bill Dixon scheduled for release later this year. The three part, seven track work was inspired by the pharaoh Akhenaten who may have been the father of Tutankhamen, the child king who succeeded him.

Campbell's trumpet and flugelhorn shine with fiery incandescence; declamatory and punchy one minute, slurring and blurting with casual aplomb the next. A master of tension and release, Bang contributes a powerful rhythmic attack, building off the themes into soaring sonic edifices. Carrott both adds to the lush ensemble palette and steps out with passages where chiming bells mutate into clanging discords. Greene, a rumbling presence anchoring the ensemble, revels in pizzicato cameos on the opening and closing pieces, while Matsuura's driving polyrhythms freely swing the ensemble without settling into a steady meter, until the closing "Sunset on the Nile (not the Sun Ra tune of the same name).

Melodic and rhythmic felicities abound bracketing compelling solo excursions, from Campbell's fiery trumpet on the darkly funky "Pharaoh's Revenge Part 1, to Carrott's stirring exhibition on the loping "Pharaoh's Revenge Part 2. Impressionistic scene setters precede both parts of "Pharaoh's Revenge with Campbell doubling on twittering recorder or the double reeded arghul, against the evocative ensemble backdrops. On the processional "Atem and Amarna Bang and Campbell essay a stately unison which deconstructs into a sinuous intertwining.

At the end, Campbell hopes we enjoyed the journey and this listener certainly did, sufficient to recommend to anyone taken by Campbell's work with his Pyramid Trio or Bang's recent Vietnam recordings. Even after years of endeavour by Sun Ra, Campbell proves that there is still ample unexplored artistic space open for interpretation in the land of the Pharaohs.