Roberto Magris: Mating Call

For the contemporary jazz composer, inclusion of standards on a recording can sweeten the offering for those more traditional tastes. If the standard is treated with invention and grace, it can also inform those tastes, encouraging further listening. Italian pianist/composer Roberto Magris achieves both with Tadd Dameron's "Mating Call." Dameron's performance of his composition appeared on the same-titled album made with saxophonist John Coltrane in 1956 and released of Prestige Records.

Squarely a hard bop anthem, in the hands of the imaginative Magris "Mating Call" is fairly transformed into a carefully crafted blowing vehicle, with a humid jungle ambience established by bassist Elisa Pruett's insistent figure and the dry wood drums of Idris Muhammad. The falling water of Magris' piano, captured closely, gives the arrangement its heavily organic finish. Alto saxophonist Paul Carr is simpatico with tenor saxophonist Michael O'Neill, the two weaving their respective spells—well versed in hard bop, but extending that language with a classic of the jazz repertoire.