Search - Frank Morgan :: Love Lost & Found

On Love, Lost & Found, alto saxophonist Frank Morgan creates a breathy, intimate tone so calm and fluid it seems to be musical breathing. The result is an ultraromantic album that reinforces Morgan's status as one of the great balladeers of jazz history. The 11 pieces are all vintage standards by the likes of Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, and Vernon Duke, but Morgan makes them extremely personal by turning the melodies into saxophone sighs that seem to confess everything. When he turns a melodic phrase from Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You" into an extended, legato exhalation, you can hear the ache of a man made dizzy by the proximity of his lover. By contrast, on Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Once I Loved," Morgan's limpid saxophone solos are imbued with the deep melancholy of a man who can still imagine that nearness but realizes it will never return. It's possible there's a better possible rhythm section for such a romantic album than pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Billy Higgins, but it's unlikely. --Geoffrey Himes