The Steve Fishwick/Osian Roberts/Frank Basile Sextet, In the Empire State, Hard Bop Records

From 2015. Recorded in New Jersey last year after a string of New York club dates, this Anglo-American affair – with trumpeter Steve Fishwick, tenorist Osian Roberts, baritone player Frank Basile, pianist Jeb Paton, bassist Mike Karn and drummer …

Published: 13 Nov 2019. Updated: 4 years.

From 2015. Recorded in New Jersey last year after a string of New York club dates, this Anglo-American affair – with trumpeter Steve Fishwick, tenorist Osian Roberts, baritone player Frank Basile, pianist Jeb Paton, bassist Mike Karn and drummer Matt Fishwick – is a bustling hard bop affair with gutsy horn playing and lively drumming. Like latter-day Jazz Messengers, the album opens with Fishwick original ‘Jymie’ (dedicated to former Messenger Jymie Merritt) and includes originals by the three co-leaders and a sprinkling of standards including a Fishwick arrangement of ‘How Deep is the Ocean.’

There’s a strong retro feeling here and a love and passion for the jazz of the 1950s and 60s steeped above all in the Blakey tradition.

It won’t change the world, but there’s plenty here to appeal to hard bop fans, the authenticity and respect for the style first and foremost in all these swinging players’ minds. SG

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2019 Highlight: Come What May

Late-March saw the release of the Joshua Redman quartet’s Come What May. Until then it was quite a while since this Joshua Redman Quartet configuration had issued an album, some 20 years or so in fact since Redman last teamed up with Aaron …

Published: 12 Nov 2019. Updated: 3 years.

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Late-March saw the release of the Joshua Redman quartet’s Come What May. Until then it was quite a while since this Joshua Redman Quartet configuration had issued an album, some 20 years or so in fact since Redman last teamed up with Aaron Goldberg, Reuben Rogers and Gregory Hutchinson in the easy mainstream space that Redman has virtually made his own over the years.

Full of bittersweet elegiac melody landing if you like right in the middle stylistically of where jazz is these days, neither smooth nor full of extravagant avant garde gesture. Redman brings with him nonetheless an encyclopedia of saxophone prowess and in some ways nothing really has changed since we were introduced to him back in the 1990s.

Full of original tunes there is plenty here for newcomers to jazz and old hands alike. For sure one thing that Redman never forgets is how to shape a melody and draw on his emotional side and with this band manages to underline his key approach so convincingly once again. SG.