Blue Jazz in Bloomington, MN

Trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader
Malachi Thompson
has outdone himself with
Blue Jazz
. Being the fourth
Africa Brass
date,
Thompson
and his notion of reinventing the manner in which a brass-driven
big band
explores the relationships between harmony and rhythm, and the more tenacious linguistic commonalities between
bebop
and
free jazz
have never been as articulately or gracefully rendered as they are in this pair of suites. The band is stellar, among the five-trumpet, four-trombone saxophone giants
Gary Bartz
Billy Harper
, with Chicago greats
Ari Brown
Gene Barge
on a cut each. The rhythm section featuring pianist
Kirk Brown
, bassist
Harrison Bankhead
, and drummer
Leon Joyce Jr.
is second to none. In addition, vocalists
Dee Alexander
the Big DooWopper
help out with one track each. The two suites,
"Black Metropolis"
"Blues for a Saint Called Louis,"
are stunning compositions in and of themselves. The former, in four sections, runs the gamut of brass interplay on sophisticated
urban jazz
blues
a la
Duke Ellington
's early-'60s charts crossed with the Latin rhythmic toughness of
Machito
and the deep-blue groove arrangements of
Oliver Nelson
. On the six-part
the New Orleans funeral dirge meets the small-group wild styling of
jazz
's earliest days in Storyville's brothels to
King Oliver
's large-band stomp to the
Hot Seven
, striated harmonic workouts to the gut bucket
as it met the big-city sophistication of New York via
Armstrong
's 1930s and '40s charts. The spirit is raucous, joyous, and utterly sophisticated; it looks forward and back across 20 years of
's own
free bop
amalgam, but also through the entirety of
history. [The album is, simply put, a singular achievement and one of the great
records in recent years, and a serious candidate for
album of 2003.] ~ Thom Jurek.