Jazz reflections

The recent death of the volcanic drummer Elvin Jones leaves McCoy Tyner as the last surviving member of the epochal John Coltrane Quartet.

So we can be heartened that he is still regularly touring and recording and his latest album combines him with some of the finest jazzmen of the next generation.

And the next after that if you consider bassist Christian McBride and New Orleans trumpeter Terence Blanchard.

Making up the all-star quintet are altoist Gary Bartz and drummer Lewis Nash.

Illuminations is the album's title as well as the name of it's opening tune.

Immediately, the two hornmen make their signatures, Blanchard with a typically lucid, note-perfect and crystalline solo and Bartz with his winding, serpentine notemaking, giving way to Tyner's piano flourishes and some virtuoso plucking from McBride.

Angelina is another Tyner tune, latin-flavoured and balladic, with the composer upping the pace in his solo, Bartz soft and restrained and Blanchard bending his notes and playing in the Brazilian mode of his album The Heart Speaks.

Nash is sharp on his snares for New Orleans Stomp and Blanchard dives in to honour his hometown, slipping and slithering down his notes like a 21st-century Henry "Red" Allen.

Bartz blows a winsome version of If I Should Lose You on soprano, with Tyner adding a fresh and beautiful complexity.

Then, Bartz digs into his own Soulstice and Blanchard goes after the high notes, while, on the trumpeter's enigmatic Blessings, it is as if Tyner is wrestling with the tune, pacifying it and making it speak his own personal, yet universal, language

McBride brings out his eloquent bow on a slow, elegiac West Philly Tone Poem and the final Alone Together concludes an album of high collective artistry, with the piano maestro inspiring the way.

Back in 1959, Tyner met Philadelphian tenor saxophonist Benny Golson just after he graduated from high school.

In 1960, he joined Golson and trumpeter Art Farmer's Jazztet, recording the album Meet the Jazztet, which included Golson's new album, Terminal One, including music from the Spielberg film The Terminal, in which the veteran has a cameo role.

On the album, Golson is joined by New York trumpeter and psychiatrist Eddie Henderson, master bassist Buster Williams, Carl Allen on drums and pianist Mike LeDonne - another formidable quintet.

The most memorable tracks are perhaps the familiar ones - although both Golson and Henderson blow powerfully on the film score.

Killer Joe is just as fine, its theme as unforgettable - and Henderson for Farmer makes an illuminating contrast, while Park Avenue Petite has Golson soloing with a bottomless depth and beauty and Henderson lickering his notes above him.

Golson wrote Blues March in 1958 for his Jazz Messengers band leader, the thunderous drummer Art Blakey.

Wisely, Allen doesn't try to revisit Art's tempestuous sound, but this less frenetic version brings out more quiescent qualities to the theme and Golson's solo is subtly novel, while Henderson's muted chorus is sprightly and beautifully pitched.

Both Cherry and Sweet Georgia Brown, Golson says, are tunes of his Philly ghetto boyhood, played with verve and some little nostalgia.

Brubeck's In Your Own Sweet Way, which Golson describes as "one of the most beautiful tunes in jazz" is rendered with a tender mood and strong bass undertones from Williams. Another tour-de-force quintet album.

Like Golson, New York pianist Benny Green, born in 1963, is an ex-Jazz Messenger, except he was one of the last of Blakey's sidemen, 30 years after Golson's tenure.

His duo album with Georgia guitarist Russell Malone, Bluebird is a brilliantly-played amalgam of jazz surprises.

Green strikes heavily on the keys in Milt Jackson's Reunion Blues, while Malone travels lightning fast through It's All Right With Me.

Stevie Wonder's The Sunshine of my Life and Oscar Peterson's tribute to the Canadian prairies Wheatland, find a place together with Charlie Parker and Cole Porter, but the most startling track is Malone's Flowers for Emmett Till, remembering the black teenager's 1955 racist murder in Money, Mississippi and prompting reflections about present US racism.

Three memorable minutes of solo southern guitar, serene and all the more powerful for being so, remind us of the real context of where jazz and the blues were born.

Albums:

McCoy Tyner - Illuminations (Telarc)
Benny Golson - Terminal One (Concord)
Benny Green and Russell Malone - Bluebird (Telarc)

CHRIS SEARLE