Search - Lonnie Plaxico :: Emergence

Bassist Lonnie Plaxico has amassed a broad resume since arriving on the scene in the early 1980s. His experiences range from working with Dexter Gordon and assorted veteran tenor saxophonists to Wynton Marsalis and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers to his association with the eclectic M-BASE crew all the way to his more recent years with Cassandra Wilson. If you listen carefully, you can hear slices of that whole pie on Emergence. Plaxico is comfortable with letting the ensemble fly. For this program of 16 original tunes, the longest lasting over seven and a half minutes, there's a sense of composition by committee. Though Plaxico's ego is listed as lead composer, the majority of these tunes were crafted by several members of the ensemble, including tenor saxophonist Don Braden, trumpeters Ralph Alessi and Larry Lunnetta, pianist Eric Lewis, drummer Lionel Cordew, and percussionist Jeffrey Haynes. These pieces, often pleasantly quirky and harmonically broad, avoid the monotonous theme-solos-theme format. Plaxico gives the package a narrative flow with six short interludes often played on electric bass with Haynes's percussion. --Willard Jenkins