Cyrus Chestnut Midnight Melodies Smoke Sessions ****
Live albums are the stock in trade of the Smoke Sessions label as well as hard bop, standards, and supreme musicianship. I've only heard Cyrus Chestnut in the flesh once a very long way from Harlem, more than 20 years ago, weirdly enough, when the Baltimore man was playing the old Akwarium club in Warsaw as Betty Carter’s pianist. In the excellent interview in the notes Chestnut comes alive quoting La Carter: “Baby Doll, you got to take a chance. You never know what’s going to happen unless you take a chance.” And Chestnut does just that skimming at high speed so outrageously over the changes, a naturally exuberant melodicist and improviser up there in the Oscar Peterson heights, reeling off line after line of the well-chosen tunes on this high-powered trio set. Recorded in November last year over a couple of nights at the Harlem club several tunes are by John Hicks, and there are a couple of Billy Strayhorn’s (when a pianist plays ‘Chelsea Bridge’ so sensitively you know you’ve got to stop everything and just listen) and a couple by the great drummer Victor Lewis who accompanies the ex-Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra player here along with the fine bassist Curtis Lundy. Less gospelly than Chestnut can be, more silkily comfortable and at ease than on some of his Atlantic albums, the melodies shining like a sun through the carefully clouded bass and squally drums and even the faint shower of appreciative audience noise. By the end and a jaunty take on Miles Davis’ ‘The Theme’ it's a lap of victory. SG