Joe Lovano UsFive, Cross Culture, Blue Note

First published in 2013. It’s a coincidence that Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Star Crossed Lovers’, the fifth track of Joe Lovano’s latest by his two-drummer band UsFive, appears around the same time as Charles Lloyd/Jason Moran’s Hagar’s Song on which Lloyd interprets the song that famously featured on Ellington’s Shakespeare-themed 1957 album Such Sweet Thunder. The Memphis man, though, opts for the alternative title the tune is known for, ‘Pretty Girl’.

The two versions are strikingly different: Lloyd’s the spaces between the notes, and the poetry of the song; Lovano’s the lovingly rendered ur-text of the melody there for the ear to tune into, and as natural as the rain in the evocative flow of his improvising.

As writer Willard Jenkins in the liner note puts it: “There’s a very humane quality to his saxophonic pronouncements.” And it’s that sense Jenkins alerts us to that is at the heart of another fine Lovano album, his 23rd for the label, a staggering record of achievement over many years. Stephen Graham

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First published in 2014. Dedicated to Dwayne Burno who died far too young at the end of 2013, and beginning with the late bassist’s ‘Devil Eyes’ a tune based on the Matt Dennis/Earl Brent song ‘Angel Eyes’ – “Dwayne just took it and went quote-unquote ‘to a darker direction’,” pianist Orrin Evans says in the notes – part of a five-part suite that comprises nearly half of the album, Liberation Blues was recorded at Smoke in Harlem over a couple of nights not long after Burno died.

With Evans are tenorist JD Allen, whose recently released excellent album Bloom the pianist played on; as Evans also was with trumpeter Sean Jones and bassist Luques Curtis on Jones’ Im.pro.vise: Never Before Seen; and Bill Stewart all rolling thunder on drums, plus on the encore track ‘The Night Had a Thousand Eyes’ – Philly scene singer Joanna Pascale adding some brooding textures. Like Midnight Melodies Miles’ ‘The Theme’ helps wrap up the tail end of the album. All in all, a very sincere technically adroit album that lights up from time to time and vaults genre from hard bop to free jazz with consummate ease, the latter a version of Paul Motian’s edgy ‘Mumbo Jumbo’. SG

Joe Lovano UsFive, Cross Culture, Blue Note

Orrin Evans, Liberation Blues, Smoke Sessions