Jonathan Finlayson & Sicilian Defense
Moment & the Message
Pi ****
Steve Coleman’s comet-like big band when it toured in the UK quite a few years ago now, never to return, included two young Californian trumpeters who are now ambassadors for the music especially at its cutting edge. One of those in that band on a highly memorable tour, Ambrose Akinmusire, was the first to emerge as an artist of startling originality. The other, Finlayson, who retains the link to the guru-like Coleman having passed through the New School and appeared in other bands led by such trailblazers of contemporary jazz as Ravi Coltrane, Steve Lehman, Vijay Iyer, and Jason Moran, is an equally exciting prospect who should be much better known on this side of the Atlantic as Moment & the Message clearly demonstrates. With an approach that recalls Ralph Alessi’s or the late Bill Dixon’s the nine tunes here go both inside and outside the tradition flavoured by an appealingly windswept, often very fast observational style. It’s cool to have a band named after a famously strategic opening chess move but equally when the band happens to include pianist-of-the-moment David Virelles who appeared in London in the spring with Tomasz Stańko and in Cheltenham with Ravi Coltrane. Virelles’ springy momentum and chordal sophistication Robert Glasper associate Damion Reid capitalises on at the drum kit, the latter’s an asymmetrical swinging style of some complexity (especially on a tune such as ‘Lo Haze’). The ballad ‘Ruy Lopez’ shows another side of Finlayson’s artistry, and like Ambrose Akinmusire Finlayson isn’t afraid to show his tender side. The quintet here is completed by bassist Keith Witty, and guitarist Miles Okazaki, the latter, like Finlayson, who also appears on Steve Coleman’s superb Functional Arrhythmias.