It's a beautiful thing when a jazz group stays together for as long as drummer
Billy Hart's Quartet
has. Since debuting in 2006, the quartet, featuring tenor saxophonist
Mark Turner
, pianist
Ethan Iverson
, and bassist
Ben Street
, has only grown more entwined; a sentiment they further underscore on their fourth album, 2025's
Just
. An icon at 83 years old who has played with such luminaries as
Herbie Hancock
and
Miles Davis
,
Hart
's reputation precedes his quartet. Yet, his bandmates (who are all under 60) are also stars in their own right; something that could describe them as a kind of supergroup, if not for their deeply ego-less and generous playing; this is a band in the truest sense. Although he has played electric fusion and driving hard-bop,
takes a measured, if no less inventive approach with his quartet. These are lyrical songs, full of harmonic and rhythmic textures that pull you deeper within the group's sound as the album progresses. The opening "Showdown" is a delicately soulful
Iverson
original that spotlights
Turner
's burnished tone and wouldn't sound out of place as a love theme to a late-'60s romantic thriller. Yet more atmospheric is
's "Layla Joy," a modal-esque tone poem that starts with a rumbling storm of low-end mallet and cymbal work before
, and
Street
emerge like a ship cutting through fog. Yet more kinetic moments pop up, as on
's crackling, off-kilter funk title-track and
's spritely and swinging "Aviation," both of which evoke the heady late-'60s and '70s work of players like
Charles Lloyd
Joe Henderson
. More than any one player's contribution, it is the combination of sounds from the
Billy Hart Quartet
that is ever present on
. ~ Matt Collar