Miles Donahue: In The Pocket

Multi-instrumentalist Miles Donahue didn't get serious about jazz until he was forty-five years old. Prior to his belated commitment, he spent nearly twenty years working weddings, functions and lounges—bread and butter jobs to pay the rent and support a family. But when he did make the decision to go for it, he went in body and heart and soul, recording a couple of first rate CDs on Ram Records before he decided to establish his own record company, Amerigo Records. In The Pocket is Donahue's first release on the label, and if his jazz dreams simmered for some years, they burst into a rolling boil here.

Donahue—one of the few jazz players who double on reeds and trumpet—plays mostly alto sax on this set; and while the disc's title suggests a contained and 'in the pocket' affair, that suggestion is only half right. The tunes—ten of the eleven are Donahue-penned—might go with a groove, but Donahue is a soloist of extraordinary creativity inventiveness; and when tenor sax man Jerry Bergonzi joins him, the results are doubly-stunning.

Donahue's alto approach is intense, his solos full of surprises—loops and swirls and eddies and churning currents. He plays with Art Pepper's urgency, George Coleman's inventiveness within the geometry of the composition, and Jackie McLean's strung-tight edginess.

In The Pocket is mainstream jazz, at its highest level, thanks in good measure to Donahue's arranging skills. Each and every tune has a sparkle and polish, similar in attitude to the George Coleman/Ned Otter collaborations Danger High Voltage and So Little Time.

A consistently sharp-edged set of straight ahead sounds. Highlights: just about any solo by Donahue or Jerry Bergonzi, anywhere on the disc; "4D's and a G" for the Jerry Bergonzi/ Donahue tenor/alto interplay; "Kelneka" for pianist Fred Hersch's eloquent solo.

Mainstream jazz doesn't get much better...

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