Wayne Escoffery – Veneration

Savant 2081

Altoist Jackie McLean left behind legions of students, among them saxophonist Wayne Escoffery who pays compliment to his deceased mentor with this new Savant release. The chosen instrumentation echoes McLean’s experiments with Bobby Hutcherson in the 1960s for Blue Note with Joe Locke’s vibes positioned as primary melodic foil. Bassist Hans Glawischnig and veteran drummer Lewis Nash complete the quartet, recorded live at the New York club Smoke in the summer of last year. Escoffery expresses a strong affection for the hardbop that was vogue during McLean’s prime and the set list cherrypicks some choice compositions from the idiom including two from Booker Little and another associated strongly with Freddie Hubbard.

Escoffery switches up his approach on tenor between tracks and gains more potency as the set advances. Scalar trills and swiftly slaloming modulations are regular parts of his horn speech, sometimes to the point of near excess, but he’s also vested with a bracing tone on the faster paced passages that directly references his coach, most notably on “Looking Ahead.” “Skydive” betrays its CTI-era origins with a light Latin rhythm and slightly bromidic feel, but the band shows it the same reverence as other pieces in the songbook and Escoffery dusts his lines with an appropriate patina of melancholy. Escoffery’s own “Tell Me Why”, a feature for the leader’s anemic soprano doesn’t fare as well and the band slips briefly over into sugary pap. Strayhorn’s signature “Isfahan” works as the album’s definitive ballad performance, with Escoffery and Glawischnig dueting in a manner that recalls Joe Henderson’s late life interpretation of the piece.

Locke is prone to vocalizing Jarrett-style beneath his blurred mallets solos, his prefacing improvisation to “I Waited for You” being one of the few instances where his amplified planks resonate without such embellishment. Nash proves soundly adept at shadowing the luminous progressions; constructing rhythms that propel and ornament at once and provide just the right amount of muscle. Glawischnig supplies a steady beating pizzicato pulse that plumbs the spaces between Locke’s mallet strokes on pieces like the sprinting “Bee Vamp.” Escoffery closes the set with a bang, rendering McLean’s classic “Melody for Melonae”, a episodic suite built on an ominous blues theme, at a length and emotive drive directly comparable to its first incarnation on Kenny Dorham’s Matador. The disc’s title leaves no secret as to Escoffery’s feelings toward his teacher and the music is similarly candid in conveying esteem.

~ Derek Taylor