*** Renée Rosnes
AS WE ARE NOW
(Blue Note)
For her fifth album
as a leader, pianist Rosnes has assembled a quartet with Chris Potter on tenor
and soprano sax, Christian McBride on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums.
Rosnes's playing, with its muscular impressionism and subtle lyricism, is
reminiscent of Maiden Voyage-era Herbie Hancock but with a more
sophisticated emotional undercurrent -- whereas Herbie, as it turned out, was
just going through a phase, Rosnes has a long-haul commitment to this
intricate, ruminative approach, and on trio cuts like "Abstraction Blue" and
Tony Williams's "Pee Wee" she achieves a complex and unresolved mood of elated
disenchantment that seems to sum up the heart of jazz's revived mainstream.
Potter has a knotty, journeyman style that comes across, on his brief features
here anyway, as too generic to impress, but the rhythm section holds the
interest with its busy elasticity, DeJohnette's brushwork on Walt Weiskopf's
"Non-Fiction" being a model of aggressive support. A solid date, then, offering
the always welcome pleasure of hearing an accomplished improviser at the peak
of her powers.
-- Richard C. Walls
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