Marcos Toledo: Hunch

There is a cliché that jazz is a universal language. Sometimes it helps to watch terrific players from just about everywhere play things that make you stop and notice. Such is the case with Marcos Toledo.

Toledo is a young guitarist who was born and raised in Guadalajara and in 2022 is based in New York. He is one of an increasing number of players from Mexico who bring their own experiences, culture and ideas to bear on the music. So there is little temptation to say, hmm, that's Al Haig or some other player whose work may have gotten to Mexico via California back in the day. Increasingly, these are players who sound like themselves, even when their work is recognizably within the tradition. So you can hear "Shiny Stockings" and know it is Frank Foster's arrangement as surely as you did when Harry James played it, albeit with different rhythmic accents now, as it should be.

Here Toledo mostly plays his own originals, and a a nice selection of them as well. His band is composed of Roberto Verástegui, Jonathan Barocio and Carlos Jose Laría Triay, and these guys can move, as "Pho Sho" briskly reveals. "Faded Stars" features Barocio on bass and Verástegui on piano, with Toledo coming in along the way. It would be interesting to put the recording on a blindfold test and ask whether the musicians were homegrown or not. At some point, it does appear that there is one indisputable beneficiary of free trade and globalization: jazz. You can hear good players anywhere, from anywhere, at home, or abroad. The title track, "Hunch" is not only a sheer display of virtuosity, but, well, it is, sailing along in the neighborhood of 300 bpm. "Moon Dance" slows things down, as if to demonstrate that Toledo et al can play pretty too, with a distinct harmonic hint of Thelonious Monk added to mix. Once you start listening for bop changes in "Wild," a number of plausible influences come to mind. But a listen to "Fresush" simply reminds you that good musicians are influenced by the past, not mired in it.

So if you get the idea that Marcos Toledo is writing music for your brain as well as for your feet, you are correct. Now, if you count on hearing a set of these tunes in Ciudad de México, enduring the traffic getting to the club will be worthwhile