Trumpet vet Rick Braun celebrates 30 years of recording since first hitting the jazz scene. For some reason, the Lee Morgan-influenced horn man has been pigeonholed into the “smooth” jazz label, but if you’ve heard his material with BWB (teaming with Kirk Whalum and Norman Brown) or his own Can You Feel It or his Chet Bakerish Sings with Strings, you’ll wonder why he doesn’t get mentioned in the same breath with Ambrose Akinmusire or Jeremy Pelt. He may have a different frame, but he paints with the same brush.
This latest album shows all of Braun’s strengths. First, his name is on almost all of the tunes, and the band sounds live and in concert, bringing together Carnell Harrell/key, Lenny Castro/perc, Tony Pulizzi/g, Chris Davis/key along with a hip 10 piece strings section for some of the tunes. With a Miles Davisy muted horn, Braun sounds mystical following Pulizzi’s intro and hip hopping around the strings on “Turkish” while getting sweet and sensuous with keys and percussion on “6th Street”. There’s some fun Soul Train wacka wooka on the Afro Sheened “Da Funk” with the team digging deep as well. With an open horn, he floats over Pulizzi’s flamenco sketchs and Castro’s canter as he swoops around the strings on “Amor De Mi Vida” and goes into classic R&B mode on the upbeat “Feet First” and “Playin’ Around”, while displaying his blues chops on the shuffling strut of “Four On The Floor”. There’s enough energy here to make up for the loss of the Keystone Pipeline.