Radam Schwartz: Saxophone Quartet Music

A listener who remembers when saxophone quartets were a novelty—and a controversial one at that—is probably wondering how much the Cost-of-Living Adjustment will be for Social Security in 2025. Yes, the esteemed World Saxophone Quartet kicked up as much a critical fuss in the late 1970s as Ornette Coleman did in the 1950s. Not as "In this jazz?" but as in "Is this music."

It is a measure of progress, one suspects, that those battles of yesteryear are not even recalled in the liner notes to this compelling recording that features compositions and arrangements by Radam Schwartz. And, by the way, the instrumentalists, Marcus Miller, Irwin Hall, Anthony Ware and Max Schweiger manage to preserve the sound and éclat of their predecessors without ever seeming to border on cacophony, sometimes misleadingly called "free jazz." There is even a vocal, "Hands/With These Hands" by Carrie Jackson, which employs the reeds as a sensitive chorus. For boppers-at-heart, there is "Validation," which is rooted in the cadences and melody of at least half a dozen bop classics. It says something about Schwartz's skill as a writer that the tune works, when it could have simply come out an odd rehash where the audience is invited to name that tune. Schwartz, a prolific and well-travelled Hammond B3 player, has seemingly recorded with nearly everyone, aside from serving as the Director of the Jazz Institute of New Jersey in Somerset, NJ.

Schwartz has at least half a dozen recordings to his credit on the Arabesque Recordings label. If this one is any indication of his earlier writing, playing and arranging, they are surely worth checking out as well. While someone might object that it is hard to really hear any new ground broken in the recording, that may well be because the earlier influences have been so thoroughly assimilated as to just lay easily on the horns—and in the ear.

This is indeed a very fine recording. The more one listens, the more one hears. And that is always a very good path to discovery.

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