*** Jamie Baum

SIGHT UNHEARD

(GM)

Baum deserves as much credit for her writing and arranging as for her soprano and alto-flute chops. In the current mode, she blends jazz and classical procedures. She mixes odd tonalities and time signatures with standard song form and bop phrasing, putting as much emphasis on written ensemble detail as on swing and spontaneous blowing.

Not that there's any shortage of the latter. Baum and trumpet-king-of-the-moment Dave Douglas spin simultaneous counterlines, making for witty bursts of dialogue, or they step forward for brainy soliloquies. Meanwhile, the arrangements shift and turn, pulsing, free-time passages alternating with funky vamp figures and straight-ahead grooves. A tune like "Aftermath" is its own self-contained little world, its "Comin' Home Baby" bass vamp and quizzical/elegiac minor-key horn/flute theme trading with spare, flowing solos from Baum, Douglas, and bassist Drew Gress. Jeff Hirshfield is the all-ears drummer; Kenny Werner and Roberta Piket chip in appropriately economic piano support (i.e., they know when to lay on a flourish and when to lay out).

-- Jon Garelick