Jarod Bufe: Brighter Days

Making a living as jazz artist is a challenge. For every jazz megastar who can support his or herself with their music, dozens rely on day jobs and remain relative unknowns, even while making great music. Players like saxophonist Buck Hill, who did a forty-year stint working for the Post Office while releasing eleven excellent recordings—including his top ten album of the year material swan song, Relax (Severn, 2006) while working the day job that provided the bread and butter for the table. Now we have tenor saxophonist Jarod Bufe, who boasts a strong, rich tone reminiscent of Hill's. Bufe has made his way financially as a woodwind technician, maintaining, repairing and spiffing up instruments for the Chicago area musicians. Or fellow musicians, we should say, because Bufe is himself a top level saxophonist and composer judging by his two album releases, New Spaces, (OA2 Records, 2018), and the disc at hand, Brighter Days.

Bufe fronts a straight ahead quartet of Tim Stine on guitar, Matt Ulery on bass, along with master drummer Jon Deitemyer holding down the drummer's chair. Their sound, on a set of Bufe originals, is fetching and uncluttered, a no nonsense musical approach that falls into the quartet mode of Art Pepper and Dexter Gordon. No pyrotechnics, no pretense, just a hearty sonic stew of mainstream originals where the four guys cook things up lock in together in perfect synch.

Thai quartet held a residency at FitzGerald's Sidebar, just outside of Chicago, from 2021 to 2019. The Covid-19 crisis put that on hold, but the group came back post-lockdown to the place that they use as a workshop for material and rapport.

"Midnight" opens the show on an ominous vibe. The quartet addresses the pandemic in "Forgotten. On " Loss Of Agency," the four players fit together as tightly as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. "Goodbye Marlene" is dedicated to a lovely and much-missed lady from the sound of it. Stine lays down an understated and intricate solo that seems to gleam with love, while the title tune sounds as if it could have come from the Pat Metheny songbook of optimism.

"Window Well" closes the set on a terrific quartet dynamic, crisp and clean and driving ahead without a bump or pothole in the road or a care in the world. Some speak of the sophomore jinx. You will not find that here.

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