Robert Jospe Quartet: The Night Sky

Virginia-based drummer Robert Jospe leads an able quartet on The Night Sky, the ninth recording under his name. The music, much of which was written or co-written by Jospe, is for the most part robust and rhythm-heavy with Jospe's assertive drum kit and Daniel Clarke's busy keyboards front and center.

The mood changes abruptly—delightfully so—on Track 8, wherein bassist Paul Langosch takes the lead on Leonard Bernstein's wistful "Some Other Time" (from the 1944 Broadway musical On the Town) before resuming its lively course with Clarke's persuasive arrangement of the Billy Strayhorn classic, "Take the 'A' Train." Clarke composed and arranged the assertive "Southern Doodle Dandy," which leads to the album's offbeat finale, "Silver Lining," on which Jospe plays unaccompanied hand pan.

Jospe and Clarke are dominant early on, driving the group securely forward on "Crooked Mile," "Samba Sunrise" and "Pyramids" before easing back and granting Chris Whiteman's mellow guitar the melodic lead on the shuffling "Desert Dream." Whiteman solos again to good effect on Jospe's scampering "Flashback," which precedes the strapping title song and one more Jospe original, "The Golden Hour," before Bernstein takes center stage with "Some Other Time."

Jospe, who holds the interesting title of Senior Lecturer in Groove Percussion at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, has been touring with this quartet since 2022, and the chemistry is admirable, as is each member's input. A solid session from fore to aft in which rhythmic give-and-take plays the leading role.