David Murray Quartet with Marta Sanchez, Luke Stewart and Russell Carter: Francesca

A jazz classicist since his heady and historic days founding The World Saxophone Quartet, David Murray takes to a studio just outside Zurich with a rhythm section of the next generation and emerges triumphant with the standout Francesca.

With an average age of, give or take, thirty-six years between them, Murray, the veteran nearing seventy, brings the music and the fire to the young ones and "Francesca" waltzes into life with a bluesy cool all its own. Pianist Marta Sánchez dazzles from the start, unspooling runs and riffs with a confident Spanish flair. Murray, his horn full throated, takes to the bandstand swinging the melody in all directions, as drummer Russell Carter and bassist Luke Stewart shift like sand, from waltz to two-step, too-dee-loo and out. The title track's roaring sax solo pulls into "Ninno," a rabble rouser of a tune wherein solo begets solo (Carter's percolates) then coalesces, each player having their say.

Murray buzzes his bass clarinet to eerily lyrical effect on the equally quixotic and exotic "Shenzhen." Sanchez hovers. Carter sambas. Stewart, with a bite and grace gloriously imbued with Jimmy Garrison, holds it all together. The brash 5/4 beauty, "Come and Go" is all fun and games as Murray comes out honking and blasting much like Albert Ayler on any given day. The trio, sharing a most keen and collective theory of interplay, provides Murray with plenty of elbow room and rips from there through "Am Gone Get Some." Bass clarinet and piano share a free jazz moment at the beginning of Don Pullen's "Richard's Tune" (a tribute to The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians pioneering pianist Muhal Richard Abrams) then swing out and into the styling "Free Mingus." Deceptively active, Sanchez, Stewart, and Carter bob, weave, twist, and tease.

Francesca comes to a charismatic close with "Cycles and Seasons." A classic piece of now-bop blowing from a simmering 7/4 to an all out 4/4 swagger with a lot of free form and tradition in the middle. It is one of those closing tunes which opens other doors. Murray, who could arguably be at the height of his compositional prowess, calls the quartet's work on Francesca the sound of surprise. Bravo to that!