Recent Listening in Brief: Tolliver, Blake, Byard

Charles Tolliver, Emperor March (Half Note). Tolliver received considerable attention for his part in the recent observance of the 50th anniversary of Thelonious Monk's Town Hall concert. Here, we have Tolliver's big band playing his own music. As in the 2007 With Love CD that announced the trumpeter and composer's resurgence, Tolliver melds new departures with traditional values that include dynamite writing for brass. His solos and those by veterans Stanley Cowell, piano, and Billy Harper, tenor saxophone, are superb. Among the youngsters who emerge impressively from the sections are pianist Anthony Wonsey, trombonist Mike Dease and tenor saxophonist Marcus Strickland. “In The Trenches" is an expansion of an audacious blues the composer developed 20 years or so ago. The first and final passages of Tolliver's title tune, inspired by the film March of the Penguins, has riff-like qualities that could embed it in the public consciousness - if the public were to again became conscious of jazz.

Seamus Blake, Live In Italy (Jazz Eyes). Except for the use of electronics as, er, enhancement in the opening track and wry punctuation in the last, this is an acoustic set. The New York tenor saxophonist out of Canada by way of Berklee affirms that he is one of the most consistently interesting soloists of his generation. Blake Is accompanied by stalwart contemporaries Danton Boller on bass and Rodney Green on drums, with the veteran pianist David Kikoski. Affinity among the group is notable on Blake's “Way Out Willy" and an extended “Darn That Dream" that begins with a ravishing Blake cadenza. A long invention based on the second movement of Debussy's string quartet objectifies the harmonic inspiration the impressionist master has long supplied jazz musicians. The journeyman Kikoski's long presence as a reliable component of the New York scene does not mean that he should be taken for granted. Nor does his work here allow him to be. Live recording quality is exceptional.

Jaki Byard, Sunshine Of My Soul: Live At The Keystone Korner (High Note). Not to be confused with the late pianist's 1967 trio album also called Sunshine Of My Soul, this is Byard at the lamented San Francisco club in a 1978 solo recording unreleased until 2007. Unclassifiable and irrepressible, he roars through more than an hour of stride, boogie woogie, bebop, interpretations of Mingus, transfigured pop songs, tone poems and a tour de force on one of his favorites, “Besame Mucho." He includes his “Sunshine," a swirling adventure in command of the piano and control of time. That piece is also on the other Sunshine Of My Soul with Elvin Jones on drums and David Ienzon on bass. Any Byard lover needs it, too.