Mark Turner Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard

Mark Turner's Live At The Village Vanguard follows a year after the saxophonist's critically acclaimed second quartet offering for the ECM label Return From The Stars (2022) and features the same group, containing live cuts of the entirety of that record. The title track "Return From The Stars," "Terminus," "Bridgetown," "Nigeria 2," "Lincoln Heights," "It's Not Alright With Me," "Wasteland" and "Unnacceptable" are taken from the album and given new guises in these vibrant live renditions. Also included are "Brother Sister," initially released on Turner's first leader date for ECM "Lathe of Heaven" (2014), "Lennie Groove," formerly recorded during his major label years at Warner Bros. and featured on In This World (1998) as well as the new composition "1946"—a tongue in cheek cool jazz exercise which could be considered a "So What"-contrafact, however with a considerably more intricately wrought head.

Turner's quartet—Jason Palmer on trumpet, Joe Martin on bass and Jonathan Pinson on drums—are in fine form on this date, recorded on 18 and 19 June 2022. Drenched in tricky time signatures, meticulously spun question-and-answer motifs which rely on the exacting polyphonous counterpoint between trumpet and saxophone, Turner's compositions never get boring, but continue to build momentum through surprising harmonic shifts and unexpected forms. "Terminus" is a fine example, starting things off in a straight four-time before the triplets take over the meter and transfigure the song into a double-time feel. It is stop and go from there, these shifting rhythmic events in steady alternation with each other as Turner and Palmer's horns wail in uneasy homophony. They continue to do so in the calypso-infused "Bridgetown," though any Caribbean connotation is overshadowed by the many unusual saxophone and trumpet movements in parallel fourths and fifths, infusing the exciting piece with an ancient spirit.

The rhythm section of Pinson and Martin make for an ideal foundation in this chordless quartet—the lack of a strictly harmonic instrument keeping Martin on his toes throughout as Pinson immerses traditional swing styles with modernist punch, always subtle yet also with vigour. Not having to worry about the rhythmic base, Turner and Palmer take advantage of the freedom and frequently solo simultaneously, as in the smoothly delivered "Brother Sister"—another tune, whose many unexpected structural elements make for an especially demanding workout for players and listeners alike.

Concluding with Turner's earliest composition of the set, "Lennie Groove," the album demonstrates how much the saxophonist has grown in the past two and a half decades, from an already very sophisticated young saxophone virtuoso in the late '90s, to a composer who has developed his very own take on the bop and adjacent jazz traditions by fusing ancient idioms with refined intellectual twists, which never come at the cost of the artist's soulfulness. For soul and swing are very much at the core and heart of Turner's music, and his uniquely oblique saxophone lines only enhance his grand compositional vision.