It’s rare these days that a band stays together as long as Branford Marsalis has kept this team in sync. Not since the days of Phil Woods’ long time team of Tom Harrell, Bill Goodwin, Hal Galper and Steve Gilmore can a band boast over ten years recording and touring, and if you add the years of Jeff Watts hitting the sticks before Just Faulkner came on with Eric Revis/b and Joey Calderazzo/p, you’re talking a group of guys that make the comfort a source of inspiration, as this Blue Note album does, as Mr. Marsalis does a re-interpretation of Keith Jarrett’s seminal 1974 album of the same name.
When you can essentially read each other’s musical minds, Marsalis as leader lets each artist have a spotlight, and it works well. Faulkner is festive and playful with the partying New Orleans beat as he hammers out “The Windup” and Revis is richly mournful with the leader’s tenor on the delicately dreary “Solstice”. The gospel driven “’Long As You Know You’re Living Your” has Calderazzo tapping into his inner Bobby Timmons as he funks up the ivories, with Marsalis’s breathy tenor caressing the melancholic “Blossom” like a Pagliacci aria. The teamwork on the Monkish “Spiral Dance” as Revis and Calderazzo setting the pace, while Calderazzo lights a candle for Marsalis’ soprano on “Belonging” before the team builds up into a dramatic climax. Do they finish each other’s sentences when they go out together for dinner?