British trumpeter/composer Kenny Wheeler is that musical anomaly-a working musician with over seven albums for a major label (ECM) who is virtually unknown to the jazz culture at-large. This relative obscurity has not prevented him from developing a style that veers from Booker Little-like melancholy to Don Cherryesque blaps of glad notes. On his latest recording Angel Song, however, Wheeler is more about indulging his composition chops. Through the course of the record’s nine tunes, Wheeler and his crew (Lee Konitz, alto; Dave Holland, bass; Bill Frisell, guitar) splash delicate, ethereal daubs of aural colors, creating impressionistic Monets out of thin air. A textural/tonal zephyr of moody intensity, Angel Song is yet another sublime slice of Kenny Wheeler’s point of view.
Kenny Wheeler: Angel Song
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