Joe Henderson: Consonance: Live At The Jazz Showcase

All About Jazz loyalists will most certainly recall the excitement that accompanied the manic energy of the not-too-distant Blue Note release of Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs (2024), pitting saxophonist Joe Henderson and McCoy Tyner onstage in the Bronx in 1966. There is a great deal of that same joie de vivre captured here on Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase, Resonance's first release from the Jazz Showcase archive

Twelve years down the line, Henderson again strides center-stage in February 1978, this time at Joe Segal's storied Jazz Showcase, and we are all, to a man, to a woman, way better off for it. With the ever daring and darting JoAnne Brackeen on piano and propulsion, bassist Steve Rodby, cutting his teeth in a post-bop/fusion cauldron before taking up with and climbing the heights alongside Pat Metheny, and high-wire drummer Danny Spencer, Henderson breaks from the gate breathing fire, blowing a frenzied "Mr. PC."

One could imagine how stunned many of the night's audience were by the elastic fury of Henderson's overactive head chart "Inner Urge." Twenty- six immediate minutes catapulted forward by a quartet locked into the moment, but pliant enough for the moment to rouse its shape. Rodby, especially on his game, whipping around and about Henderson's cyclonic winds with a strong, counter headwind of his own. Brackeen cuts in, then Spencer, then it is a roll and a tumble to the end. In a word: exhilarating!

On the cooler, not-so-hard bop side, "Invitation," pushed into being by Rodby and Spencer, sidewinds and meanders while Henderson (inspired by the likes of Dexter Gordon and Charlie Parker solos like the jazz master he alone was. Brackeen, at her most emphatic and sympathetic, takes up the tune about half-way through and delivers a stylish masterclass on the primal art of mid-20th-century jazz piano.


From there, Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase never, ever lets up. Speaking of Parker, his title-defying "Relaxin' at Camarillo" rushes in, lifts everyone's skirts, and rushes out. "Recorda Me" another Henderson storm chaser, brews within and without itself as Brackeen, Rodby, and Spencer cover all the angles, the saxophonist lays bare. Blowing solo to introduce "'Round Midnight," the quartet takes on the blushing classics "Good Morning Heartache" and "Softly, Aa In A Morning Sunrise" before accelerating into the set closing "Isotope."


More than another to-be-celebrated release to commemorate Record Store Day 2026, Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase is a moment in time rarely, if ever, revisited, again. A time of ideas, expression, and, most importantly, freedom. Available as a limited-edition, 180-gram 3-LP and 2 CD set with contemporary musings by Brackeen, Robby, Spencer, and more.