As soon as you hear the opening salvo of Lew Tabackin’s tenor sax on “Afternoon in Paris” with Boris Kozlov/b and Mark Taylor/dr, you can palpably detect the difference a generation of saxophonists has made. Tabackin spent years blowing over and with his legendary jazz orchestra with Toshiko Akiyoshi during the 70s and 80s, and you either sink or swim in that environment. Tabackin’s sound is both muscular and musical, able to fill a room with its texture and still find enough for growls, blurps and slurs that add accent to the bopper’s dialect. The lithe and flexible interaction is both in sync enough to swing, yet expansive enough to go out, but not too far as on the authoritative and muscular “Three Little Words.” His delivery of the haunting “Day Dream” is a nimbus cloud that floats and hovers. He also shows his worth on the flute, and his style there is all his own, adding a hint of Asian mysticism to his tone as on “Garden at Life Time” and a sepia toned “Yesterdays.”
Does anyone living match this masters mix of swing and experimentation?