Al Foster Reflects on Adventures of Last Century

Now that my age has passed three quarters of a century, I tend to approach the “veteran” jazz artists by comparing their age to my own. Drummer Al Foster was born about three and a half years before me. For those that like to “do the math,” that means that he will turn 80 this coming January 18. Foster made his recording debut at the age of twenty on the Blue Mitchell album The Thing to Do. That means that his recording career began around the time I graduated from high school.

The Discography section of Foster’s Wikipedia page is definitely a thing of beauty. He seems to have been in all the right places at all the right times, beginning with his replacing Jack DeJohnette in Miles Davis’ group in 1972. One week from today Smoke Sessions Records will release the latest album with Foster as leader.

courtesy of DL Media

Appropriately enough, the title of this album is Reflections. Five of the tracks are compositions by some of the most important names of the last century. Davis leads the list (as one might guess); and the others are Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, and McCoy Tyner. On the album itself, Foster leads a quintet, whose other members are Nicholas Payton on trumpet, Chris Potter on saxophone, Kevin Hays on piano, and Vincente Archer on bass.

Three of the tracks on the album are by Payton, Potter, and Hays, respectively. The remaining three tracks are by Foster himself. Two of them account for the beginning and ending of the album; and, as suggested by their titles (“T.S. Monk” and “Monk’s Bossa”), both of them are homages to Thelonious Monk, dropping tidbits of Monk standards here and there.

Reflections is scheduled for release one week from today. As is often the case, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders. My only real peeve is that, for all intents and purposes, no useful advance content has been provided. There is no indication that the album comes with a booklet, and that Amazon.com Web page does not even have a back-cover image for the CD. Furthermore, the only place to find a track listing is on the MP3 Web page; and that provides only titles, with no mention of the composers. Similarly, the information about personnel is limited to the names being listed on the album cover.

The good news is that DL Media Music, which is handling distribution, has created an informative and engaging press release. A Web page has been created for that press release. Reflections is an album that deserves attentive reflection while listening. That press release goes a long way towards channeling attention and could not be a better source for appreciating both Foster’s talents and the diversity of ways through which he has harnessed them.