Malachi Thompson
has little patience with dogmatists who claim that a
jazz
musician has to live in New York to be legitimate. The veteran trumpeter has been around the Chicago
scene all his life, and he knows darn well that there are many accomplished Midwestern improvisers who don't have a Manhattan address. In the liner notes that he wrote for
Talking Horns
,
Thompson
spends a lot of time discussing the Chicago/St. Louis connection in
-- a connection that
Delmark
founder
Bob Koester
is well aware of because he started the label in St. Louis before moving it to Chicago. Both are Midwestern cities that have made important contributions to
, and this 1999 session finds
acknowledging the cities by leading a sextet that consists of four Chicagoans (
, pianist
Willie Pickens
, bassist
Harrison Bankhead
, and drummer
Reggie Nicholson
) and two St. Louis natives (alto saxman
Oliver Lake
and baritone saxman
Hamiet Bluiett
). Together, the improvisers favor an inside/outside approach and divide their time between hard swinging
post-bop
and more abstract, AACM-minded
avant-garde
.
"Circles in the Air"
and the African-influenced title track are among the CDs more left-of-center offerings, while
"Brass and Oak,"
"Way Back When We Didn't Understand,"
and the
McCoy Tyner
-ish
"Lucky Seven"
are hard swinging
items that are more inside than outside.
, true to form, insists on keeping his options open -- the trumpeter sees no reason why he cannot be influenced by
Freddie Hubbard
one minute and
Lester Bowie
the next. As a result,
is unpredictable -- you never know from one track to the next if the sextet will go in a straight-ahead
direction or an AACM-influenced
direction. But whatever direction the sextet chooses, this album is consistently strong and serves as a fine example of Midwestern acoustic
. ~ Alex Henderson