Will Lyle: The All Seeing Eye

According to bassist Will Lyle, his mentor the late drummer Ralph Peterson, Jr. once told him that an album is like a snapshot—a picture of where you are musically at that unique point in time. After scanning the personnel list on Lyle's latest recording, The All Seeing Eye, a second piece of advice must have been, "surround yourself with the best possible musicians you can find."

If so, Lyle took that guidance to heart, fleshing out his rhythm section with a pair of acknowledged masters, pianist David Kikoski and drummer Billy Drummond, and enlisting the superb tenor saxophonist Lucas Pino to man the front line. A second tenor, album producer Tim Lin, sits in on Lyle's charming composition, "Saturn Return," and joins Pino on another, "Deep Fake," while Sirintip “Tippan” Phasuk adds a vocal on the closing number, Burton Lane's "On a Clear Day," bolstering her credentials as a jazz singer.

Even though everyone, as would be expected, punches above his weight, Pino's voice is of necessity the strongest and most persusasive, and he never fails to please, delivering one inventive phrase after another while lingering more often than not in the tenor's higher register. Kikoski is another exemplary improviser, and Lyle and Drummond make the most of every opportunity to broaden their solo statements.

The album opens with Craig Cammell's sauntering "Eridania," moves to another original composition, Rico Jones' rhythmically burnished "Lineas de Sangre," and also includes the standards "Autumn Nocturne" and Cole Porter's "All of You," the last from the 1957 Fred Astaire film Silk Stockings. Bottom line: a fine small-group album whose sundry parts blend seamlessly to present a bright and pleasurable listening experience.