Time and Time Again

T

here’s a new album on the way from The Cookers, the no-nonsense veterans, who, in recent years, have set high standards in consolidating heritage hard bop, and driving acoustic jazz.
They’ve been around some seven years, and Time and Time Again, their new Motéma release due in mid-September in the US, is their fourth album.
Billy Harper, tenor saxophone, Eddie Henderson, trumpet, David Weiss, trumpet, Donald Harrison, alto sax, recording with the Cookers for the first time, George Cables, piano, Cecil McBee, bass, and Billy Hart, drums, make up the band this time around playing originals by Harper, Cables, McBee, Hart, and Weiss.
Tracks include a tender farewell to the late Mulgrew Miller, led off by a gently undulating, lightly gospelised, Cables piano line met with aching horn ensemble response (the track also featured on recent Cables trio album Icons and Influences), and there’s a new version of Billy Harper tune ‘Sir Galahad’ that dates back to the saxophonist’s 1973 debut, Capra Black.
The Cookers are over playing some European dates next month with gigs at the Marciac festival in France on 12 August, the Oslo Jazz Festival in Norway on 13 August, Nisville jazz festival in Serbia on 14 August, and La Petite Pierre Jazz Festival in France on 15 August. SG