Is it me, or does it seem like every other album by a saxophonist is an homage to John Coltrane, whether or not the connection is made explicit? It’s hard to escape the great man’s shadow, that’s for sure. On his album Brightly Dark (Satchmo Jazz), soprano and tenor saxophonist Tim Armacost says “what the heck” and starts right off with a tune called “Afro Pentameter,” which in spirit evokes the Coltrane soprano tour de force “Afro Blue” from Live at Birdland. From there, Armacost Newks things up, running down such tunes as “May I Come In?” and “Old Devil Moon” with a Sonny-er disposition. The band (Bruce Barth, piano; Ray Drummond, bass; and Billy Hart, drums) plays with the focus and degree of excitement one would expect; Hart shows us once again why he’s one of the great jazz drummers, period. The fades at the end of some tunes are pretty annoying. Still, Armacost’s old-fashioned head-solos-head kind of jazz is full of gumption, and great fun, besides. Kinda wish there were more new albums like this crossing my CD player.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time