Search - David Murray Big Band, Lawrence Butch Morris :: South of the Border

David Murray has made his name in dozens of contexts since his arrival on the mid-1970s jazz scene while barely in his 20s. With the World Saxophone Quartet, he's alternately fire breathing and swinging, a balladeer and a tiger. With the David Murray Big Band, he's no less chameleonic, steering his troops (who look like a roll call of post-1960s greats) through elaborate melodies and then bursting skyward with energetic leaps. South of the Border opens with a typically swinging melody, Sonny Rollins's "St. Thomas." Never wont to sit still, the band launches into another swinger, "Happy Birthday Wayne, Jr." long enough to dig the melody, and then they go hog wild, cutting sax riffs across the rhythms in delighted antiphony. They take on Murray's own "Flowers for Albert," as well as conductor Lawrence "Butch" Morris's moody "Fling" and Craig Harris's romantic "Awakening Ancestors." The band is a hoot, never resting and never yielding their at-once love of directness and musical muscle. --Andrew Bartlett