Cover of the album being examined
This past Record Store Day, April 18, Time Traveler Recordings released three albums, along with digital copies, of three particularly adventurous jazz performers from the second half of the last century. One of them was bassist Buster Williams, whose name always seemed to come up whenever I was in conversation with San Francisco performers particularly devoted to contemporary music. Ironically, my first encounter with Williams’ music (as both composer and performer) came from one of those albums released on Record Store Day. The title of the album is Pinnacle, consisting of five tracks amounting to a little less than 45 minutes of music.
Williams leads a septet with a front line of trumpeter Woody Shaw and two saxophonists. The first of them, Earl Turbinton, doubles on clarinet, and the other, Sonny Fortune, also plays both flute and alto flute. Rhythm is provided by percussionist Guilherme Franco, Billy Hart on drums, and Onaje Allan Gumbs, who divides his time across acoustic and electric piano, Moog synthesizer, and an ARP String Ensemble. (I suspect I am not the only one to find Shaw the only familiar name!)
I came away from this album feeling that the overall duration was just about right for the listening experience. The diversity of instruments allows for an engaging variety of approaches to improvisation. Williams has performed with the likes of Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Miles Davis; but there is much to engage the attentive listener as he finds paths to improvisation of his own. As I write this, the album is available from Amazon.com only on vinyl; but I am hoping that it will be available to “digital listeners” in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment