Randy Ingram: Aries Dance

No one would suggest that a car stereo in a rush-hour traffic jam is an ideal environment to evaluate a recording—or even to squeeze much enjoyment out of one. Yet even in this setting the graceful, gliding waltz that opens Randy Ingram's Aries Dance immediately dispelled the frustration and tension of the highway like an offshore breeze drives away the midsummer heat. As traffic crept toward Columbus, Ohio at the Polaris Parkway exit, a quick check of the title: it was "Toward Polaris," and the spell had been cast. Corny? Perhaps, but subsequent listening confirmed that initial impression and then some.

This is a thoroughly mainstream release, with two standards and a Wayne Shorter composition among six Ingram originals. Of the latter, "Para Milton e Pedro" and "Guimarães" are both sambas tinted with the floating, slightly yearning quality that Fred Hersch brings to Brazilian music. Two other compositions credited to the pianist sound like group improvisations and function almost as entr'actes between larger statements, "Guimarães" among them. The other is a bracing dash through "You and the Night and the Music." Yes, everybody plays this tune, but not everybody plays it with the great Billy Hart who brings decades of wisdom and plenty of fireworks to the drum chair. Everything he does on Aries feels completely fresh and utterly right. Listen to the way he begins the title cut, seemingly unsure whether to swing it or play a backbeat. Not willing to commit to either, Hart creates a beat on the spot that lies between the two, and he makes it work. This is drum genius.

Still, the highlight of Aries comes with Shorter's seldom-covered "Penelope." As originally recorded in 1965 and issued on Etcetera (Blue Note, 1980), it is a night-blooming cereus, one of Shorter's humid ballads with a sighing melody and harmonies that feel vaguely Brazilian. Ingram keeps the original's languorous tempo but starting with a long, rubato intro for unaccompanied piano, ups the ante on the dark mysteries implied by Shorter's harmonic outline. The band enters two minutes and twenty seconds later like a watchful parent quietly coming to the bedside of a sleeping child. There is tenderness and strength in bassist Drew Gress' thoughtful footfalls and Hart's whispering brushes—an exquisite performance of a composition that should be covered more often.

If Aries makes no great claims of novelty or profundity, there is something profoundly satisfying about music that knows itself so well and beckons the listener toward it with the kind of modesty only master musicians can attain. And though it hardly needs to be said, listening at home on a good system will let you hear every detail of engineer James Farber's clear and teemingly alive recording.

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