Search - Fred Hess :: Crossed Paths

Strong new release from Hess

N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 04/20/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'd found _The Long and the Short of It_, Hess's previous release (with the identical band) interesting but a little too muted to really get involved in; this one has all the virtues of its predecessor but is altogether more vivid. Hess takes the standard freebop format--sax, trumpet, bass, drums--& refashions it according to his own sensibility: the emphasis is on rigorously worked out counterpoint, Ornettish melodies & a silvery delicacy & obliquity. Ron Miles, who was a little too pale on the previous disc, really shines here, & Ken Filiano & Matt Wilson are a terrific rhythm section, both of them as persistently tuneful as the horns. Hess is extremely hard to categorize as a saxophonist--you get the impression of a player who's absorbed just about everything under the sun (in a recent interview he speaks of everyone from the AACM players to Michael Brecker to Bob Berg to Lester Young & Coleman Hawkins). I think of him as a "pure" player in a Warne Marsh vein, though I'm not sure he'd go along with that comparison (at least, he's never mentioned Marsh in an interview)--but in that the focus is very much on the instant creation of complex but highly provisional musical structures, rather than filling out a larger rhetorical structure. Which is to say that this is not "dramatic" music--it always seems to elude you rather than spelling out a series of climaxes. It can sometimes seem a little too concise, without that element of sprawl which gives jazz much of its charm--one always feels that each solo on this disc could easily have been a chorus or two longer--yet it's so rare that you get freebop that's this disciplined & self-consciously cliche-free that I really shouldn't be complaining. One of my favourite jazz releases so far this year."