Tom Harrell, Trip, HighNote **** RECOMMENDED
Tom Harrell has influenced quite a few young players, maybe the latest, new trumpet-star-in-the-making on this side of the Atlantic, Reuben Fowler, is the most obvious. And, possibly needless to say, Harrell has also more than earned the respect of his peers drawn from the impact many albums of his own dating back to the 1970s have instilled on a number of luminaries. It’s appropriate for a few reasons that trumpeter Dave Douglas has penned a sleeve note here.
Douglas, whose sound actually isn’t a million miles away from Harrell’s on some of his own albums such as The Infinite for example, refers to the Illinois-born 68-year-old’s membership of groups such as ones led by the late Horace Silver as well as Harrell’s own work as a bandleader and refers to Tom’s “swinging, lyrical personal vocabulary.” Here that aspect is easy to grasp in a quartet setting, with New Cool School saxophonist Mark Turner blending best with Harrell on ‘There’, bassist Ugonna Okegwo (who was on Harrell’s 2013 album Colors of a Dream), and drummer Adam Cruz who kind of plays, uncannily, with an Adam Nussbaum skip about him on a Don Quixote-themed album dominated by Harrell’s The Adventures of a Quixotic Character six-part suite.
Harrell paraphrases, prods and pokes at the melodies of his own compositions as he goes along, creating sparkling flurries that stir things up or settles down all gathered in an inconsequential heap expressed in a language that harks back to the glory days of hard bop, sometimes favouring witty melodic turns of phrases or moving into edgier and harsher territory.
‘Windmills’ is the best part of the suite for me, full of swirling drama delivered with far sighted solos incorporating an Hispanic sound that has long fascinated jazz composers even before Sketches of Spain. Also it’s impossible to avoid thinking back to Kenny Wheeler’s very different but relevant, given the subject matter here, classic album Windmill Tilter from the late-1960s.
The Don Quixote suite was commissioned by Douglas’ Festival of New Trumpet Music, the latest running of which is this month, and the album was recorded in Hoboken, New Jersey, although the recording date is clearly wrong as it says October 2014. Quick: the time machine!
A very playable, likeable yet deep, tonally complex record with a loose imaginative feel to it, featuring players who clearly understand and appreciate each other and who respond suitably. ‘Coming Home’, say, is an immense ballad, the simplicity as compelling as the honesty in the playing and it may just contain, in the first one up, Harrell’s best solo of the whole superlative affair. SG
Tom Harrell, above. Photo: Angela Harrell
Released in the UK/Ireland on Monday 15 September