Cover of the album being discussed (from the Amazon.com Web page)
My first encounter with trombonist Michael Dease took place in August of last year, when I wrote about Grove’s Groove, a tribute album on Le Coq Records for the late Roy Hargrove, whose instruments were trumpet and flugelhorn. For his latest release he moved over to Origin Records for a two-CD set entitled City Life. The first CD is a trio album with Linda May Han Oh on bass and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts. “Movie Theme” adds the voice of Dease’s daughter Brooklyn Dease, and it includes a second track for an alternate take. The second CD presents a quintet, which includes Nicole Glover on tenor saxophone, pianist Geoffrey Keezer, and Watts again on drum. Oh again plays bass on all but two of the tracks, on which the bassist in Jared Beckstead-Craan.
Grove’s Groove included two standards by Vincent Youmans’ and Jay Livingston, respectively, both given vocals by Jocelyn Gould. City Life, on the other hand, involves a diversity of composers, past and present, all of whom are accounted for in the accompanying booklet. Dease seems to believe that the attentive listener should search for the necessary information, rather than having it spoon-fed on the album jacket! On the other hand, he may simply feel that “just listening” is all that matters, reflecting one of my favorite quotations from T. S. Eliot:
Oh, do not ask “What is it?”Let us go and make our visit.
There is more than enough imaginative improvisatory work in Dease’s solo work to make the visit a satisfying one.
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