Allan Chase - Dark Clouds With Silver Linings (Accurate)

This week I'd like to revisit an old -- or it is a younger? -- enthusiasm for this recording.

Having been exposed to the Herbie Nichols Project discs, Andrew Hill's Dusk and intimate sessions led by Dewey Redman, Cecil McBee and Lee Konitz, it has gotten to the point that, if I see trumpeter Ron Horton's or drummer Matt Wilson's listed in the credits, I'll give the CD in question at least a cursory listen. Both musicians are present here, along with Tony Scherr on bass and the leader himself -- a veteran of both Your Neighborhood Saxophone Quartet and Rashied Ali's Prima Materia -- on soprano and alto saxophones. Yes, another pianoless quartet, but with a twist, one that flirts deliciously with the arch: as the liner notes say right up-front, these musicians are "playing music associated with pianists".

So we have the Sun Ra title track, with its characteristically unusual proportions (those melodic lines seem to be of random lengths) and elliptical harmonies, two rarely played pieces from the twilight of Bud Powell's career as a composer (the Monkish calypso "Comin' Up" and the children's song sketch "Borderick", each of which presents the improviser with unique challenges, one of Horace Silver's knottiest bop themes ("Yeah!"), and some cherry-picked standards, including an exuberant version of "Poinciana", the into to which would make Albert and Donald Ayler proud. Wilson, a truly swinging drummer who also knows how to exploit the vast array of colors available to him, is a terrific asset here. Horton is engaging as usual; some may find him "derivative" of the increasingly dour Tom Harrell and Dave Douglas, but, where both those men sometimes ignore the most musical option in their solos in favor of the idiosyncratic effect, Horton is a brass player whose ideas are equal to the beauty and strength of his tone -- an Art Farmer for the post-modern age. Chase himself excels more on alto than soprano. Like so many technically proficient sax doublers, Chase adjusts himself to the smaller horn, rather than reshaping the instrument into a medium for self-expression. On alto, however, Chase commands a sound that is both rubbery and crystalline, or not too juicy yet not desiccated (otherwise know as the Pete Brown / Earl Bostic "chicken fat" factor). On his feature, ("East Of The Sun"), he blows lithe, skipping, cart-wheeling phrases in a half-smiling, nonchalant manner that recalls both the "Dolphy-esque" Makanda Ken McIntyre and the "cool" Hal McKusick.

The arrangements here may lack the garret-dwelling, scribbled intricacy of George Russell's classic mid-1950's Jazz Workshop masterpieces, but all the members of the quartet evince the poise and versatility that Russell's favorite soloists of that era -- Farmer, McKusick, Barry Galbraith, Bill Evans, Don Ellis -- possessed. This is not to say that, as expression, Dark Clouds With Silver Linings lacks that lofty quality of ambitiousness. Chase and company may be well-schooled ("Berklee" and "The University of North Texas" appear on most everyone's c.v. here), but they aren't shut away in any ivory tower, either.