Led off by 'Love for Sale' vibist Joe Locke's approach is busy and bustling on the Cole Porter 1930s song. That is the scene setter. Like the crescendo of activity you might hear in the dedicated hubbub of a market place then a step back on the track that follows, a retreat as if indoors to a silent place for Roy Hargrove elegy 'Raise Heaven (For Roy)' - a handsome Locke original where there is a close dialogue with the quartet's pianist Jim Ridl and during which drummer Samvel Sarkisyan is painstakingly sensitive.
But what about the title track led off by the drummer? It's quite cinematic and eastern European and even a little Levantine sounding in the dots, accidentals and gritty zither-like edge of the main theme. Quite a brooding but not self absorbed album 'Elegy For All Of Us' does what Locke does very well which is to add length to his ideas - notes coast for ages and there is an aura of reverberation that surrounds this tune like a halo.
Locke's quartet is completed by bassist Lorin Cohen while guests include English sax icon Tim Garland. Later there is another salute to a fallen jazz icon, Vic Juris, who died in 2019 - and it's the most poignant melody of all full of an almost childlike sense of wonder. So, given a fair range of elegiac mood this is an album very much in memoriam and yet full of warm tender moments rather than a maudlin collection of dirges. The driving 'Shifting Moon' is notable for some sonic texture at the beginning that the engineers have done well to draw out in the fabric of the sound quality - and Locke's solo statement of the Strayhorn classic 'Lush Life' is a judicious and satisfying way to close the at-all-times dignified, Makram.
Joe Locke, photo: detail from the album cover
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