The first question that comes to my mind is “What does “Black Art Jazz” sound like, as opposed to “White Art Jazz”? I thought color couldn’t be heard, but these are the times we live in. It reminds me of those “Blindfold Tests” where listeners had to guess whether the musician was black or white.
All you can tell from these sounds is that Wayne Escoffery/ts, Jeremy Pelt/tp, James Burton III/tb, Xavier Davis/p, Vicente Archer/b and Johnathan Blake/dr know how to carry on and advance the jazz tradition. They’ve teamed up together before in bands with Pelt or Tom Harrill, but here at a couple of recordings (one in studio and one at a gig) you get the best of the best, as just about everyone brings in a tune to try out. The tunes are dedicated to inspirations such as W.E.B. Dubois, with “Double Consciousness” including some rich harmonies which dance around Escoffery’s passionate tenor. “Salvador Da Bahia” and ”No Small Change” are clever Davis compositions which allow his rich ideas to develop during his solos, while the rest of the rhythm team swings with flexibility and agility. The real corker her, however, is the concert delivery of “The Shadower” which has Pelt holding a single note for an inordinate number of choruses, allowing the tension to build to ecstatic levels. He slowly starts adding punctuation to the single note, still using his circular breathing before finally letting himself and the audience take a deep breath of recovery. WHEW! Lot’s to appreciate here, either in color or black and white!
Sunnyside Records