My review of Kenny Wheeler's Six for Six, today at All About Jazz.
While he's been recording for Cam Jazz for nearly a decade, this is the veteran expat Canadian trumpeter's first recording for the Italian label with a small ensemble that also features a drummer. It's also his first sextet date since Around Six (ECM, 1980) and his first ever to share the front line with two saxophones, in the case Stan Sulzmann and Bobby Wellins, both longtime veterans of the British jazz scene,
Add longtime musical partners, pianist John Taylor and bassist Chris Laurence, along with drummer Martin France, and you have the makings for one of Wheeler's most incendiary records since 1984's Double, Double You (ECM), with the late Michael Brecker, although it still possesses the intrinsic melancholic lyricism and elegant swing that's imbued Wheeler's recordings from the very beginning.
Wheeler, now well into his eighties, recorded this session five years ago, prior to his big band date, The Long Waiting (Cam Jazz, 2012), and shares a very similar program of material, but hearing the music in the more open, free-wheeling context of a smaller ensemble makes for a completely different listen. Wheeler's skill in larger contexts has long since been a cornerstone of his career, but so, too, has his work with smaller ensembles, making Six for Six a perfect followup to The Long Waiting. Wheeler's also playing at the top of his game, still capable of hitting those stratospheric leaps with compete accuracy and power.
Review here.
Bookmarks