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4.0 out of 5 stars
Enrico Rava steals the show, March 15, 2010
Thanks to Japan's redoubtable Venus Records for bringing this 1995 date by the late French jazzman Barney Wilen back to the light of day. Astonishingly, it fits right in with the label's current aesthetic: impeccably recorded post-bop in a (very) mellow tone. Wilen, who plays tenor and alto sax almost indistinguishably (his tenor sound tends to the high end of his horn), has a great story, playing with the likes of Kenny Clarke and Miles Davis in the 1950s, finding a career in movie soundtracks, and enjoying a late-period renaissance around the time this album was made. His playing here is subsumed to the whole of the band he's assembled, which eschews the classic theme-solos-theme approach for something more intertwining. Wilen and Italian trumpet master Enrico Rava play almost unison lines before branching off into solos, but everyone is always commenting on what the others are playing. And, although Wilen can sometimes seem a bit anonymous and his pitch can occasionally waver, he also has some fine moments of unforced beauty, such as a pianoless trio performance on "Bella Ciao" and a terrific "Besame Mucho". But the real star of the proceedings is Rava, who comes off on this album like Chet Baker on a really good day, displaying a pure tone and effortless essaying logically elemental solos. It's a gorgeous performance that threatens to upstage the leader, and it seems no coincidence that they chose to cover the classic Gerry Mulligan tune "Line for Lyons", an early staple of Mulligan's quartet with Baker. The telepathic interplay of Mulligan and Baker is clearly what Wilen and Rava were going for here, and they largely nail it.
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