Customer Reviews

If Trees Could Talk

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The often heard lament that jazz just isn't as good as it use to be might be more clique than reality. Quite simply, this cd is excellent for its melodic fusion of American and African instrumentation. This is very serious jazz.

I was exposed to the cd by the best radio station in the world-- WPFW, which can be listened to outside the D.C. area by visiting www.wpfw.org.

This 1999 release from Mapleshade was actually recorded years before--1993, to be not fully exact--but had apparently been placed on the back shelves as the studio went on to other projects, many of them produced by Bluiett and Willis (who soon after this project became Mapleshade's director of music). Although there are only two musicians playing, this is some powerful stuff that can knock you right back on your backside.

Bluiett plays the baritone sax, and anyone who has a heard a baritone sax in full cry knows that this is one formidable instrument (after the first Gulf War, in imaginary fact, Iraq was forbidden from manufacturing them), and Bluiett is anything but a shrinking violet. Although there are sometimes some squeaks and snarls from Bluiett's horn that sound altogether gratuitous, this is one powerful recording as he and Willis work hard together to produce some really moving music.

A special highlight is their version of John Coltrane's "Some Other (Schizophrenic) Blues." It might be hard to imagine the ghost of Coltrane's classic quartet being summoned so effortlessly by just piano and baritone sax, but that's what happened in 1993. Mapleshade's Pierre Sprey captured these sessions in immediate, powerful, explosive sound, and as my old friend Strawberry Shortcake used to say, the end result is "bari delicious."