Michael Dease: Flow

Everything comes together for Michael Dease and company on Flow, which should be no surprise but mustn't be taken for granted. The dynamic Mr. Dease, a consummate musician, sweeps his diverse crew of long-term collaborators and gifted newcomers through a confluence of songs rich in melody, rhythm and feeling. Pleasure-forward, Flow entices, refreshes, buoys and inspires.

The album—Dease's 18th as a leader since 2005 and his 11th from Posi-Tone, all imbued with joyful engagement and flaunting stylistic variety—covers a lot of ground. In fact, from this trombone virtuoso's first move—an expressive "free" duet with pianist Geoffrey Keezer introducing Charlie Parker's obscure contrafact "Cardboard"—through a sequence of small group tracks to the surprise of our man spryly walking the blues on upright bass on "The Rodfather" ("a nod to legendary bassist Rodney Whitaker), we get a veritable tour of today's jazz landscape. Who better to guide than the multi-instrumentalist, cool composer, hot improviser, seasoned bandmaster, proven talent scout, generous educator and keeper of the flame Michael Dease?

Appreciation of this music, of course, starts with how it sounds. So listen to Dease's fast, sure lines, cast from his large, dark horn with dry-heat precision, evoking brawn, funk, delicacy, tenderness and many positions in between. His themes and solo statements probe subtle issues, as with "Entitlement," delve into psychological reflections—"Not the Norm"—or rue what's over in Sharel Cassity's bluesy ballad "Love's Lament," but he equally likes to build from ostinatos ("Grand Seiko"), insouciant 1960s-era hip-shaking ("New Girl," by Duke Pearson), intricate and quick rhythms (like that of Brazil choro in "Recife's Blues" by the late trumpeter and Dease employer Claudio Roditi) and Jazz Messengers' hard swing (as on "ST In the House," a shout out to ex-Messenger trombonist Steve Turre).

That said, what really makes this music music is the cohesion of collaborators Dease has convened. Pianist Keezer, who the trombonist credits with mentorship during their five-year tenure in the late saxophonist David Sanborn's group, has so much fun here, adding irrepressible panache. Alto saxophonist and flutist Cassity, who Dease calls his best friend (in the past two decades they've been on some dozen records together; she's on the faculty at his Brevard Music Center summer camp; their kids play together, etc.), blends and balances with him effortlessly in the foreground, adds counterpoint that stands on its own and blows to dazzle—their rare flute/'bone frontline is fine in itself. On bass, African and Canadian-raised Jared Beckstead-Craan, a Dease protégé as a Master's degree candidate at Michigan State University, provides a supple bottom with spring to it; drummer Gary Kerkezou, a native of Greece who was a concert violinist before convincing her parents she should move to drums, is deft, a dancer, her drive snappy and motivating. Check out the bass-drum passages at the pivot point in Keezer's tune "Haru No Kaze" when it turns into a Caribbean bacchanal.

Dease says that his cast came to the session with just the right readiness: "Our recording process had the warmth of a Thanksgiving dinner, or an overdue family reunion. My band has a deep shared musical vernacular and drinks from the well of ancestral respect. If jazz suffers from an abundance of stylistic cliques that end up being creatively stagnant, Flow involves the great artists in this ensemble in uniting along shared pathways heading towards home—which I envision as a vast expanse, the sea to which all streams lead, where there is no stylistic segregation."

Thinking about it, he says, "My interest in that kind of open fluidity is perhaps a nod to my biracial upbringing"—his parents being Black and white. Whatever the source, his main way is fed by each of his players as a river by its tributaries—"I could feel that they were truly there for me before the first note was played, and we completed this record in about five hours."

Five hours of recording, based on years and years of serious play by each the quintet's members, resulting in a cohesive album of songs clear as a mountain brook and are unlikely to fade as time goes by. The great thing about jazz is that its masters make such processes, which are not the norm in any other art form, seem easy. As jazz listeners, we seek the unique, the unusual, the exemplary, the extraordinary—music that contains a spark of inspiration applied to worthy material, conveying recognizable emotions and long-lasting experience. Michael Dease's Flow is just such music. Its surfaces are swift, it splashes and bubbles, its currents are deep, its course runs true.

Liner Notes copyright © 2025 Howard Mandel.

Flow can be purchased here.

Contact Howard Mandel at All About Jazz.
Howard is a Chicago-born writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and videographer. Visit Howard at howardmandel.com.

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