Benny Golson - new time, new 'tet

Led by Grammy "Lifetime Achievement" award winning saxophonist-composer Benny Golson, this version of the jazztet features heavyweight jazz musicians on each instrument: trumpet master, Eddie Henderson; trombone virtuoso, Steve Davis; the brilliant Mike LeDonne, piano; bassist extraordinaire, Buster Williams; and percussion ace, Carl Allen.

NEW TIME, NEW ‘TET elaborates the traditional jazztet concept. This album’s song choices advance a subtle but genuinely seductive proposal: what if jazz, conventionally defined, is overdue for re-inspection and revision? What if "jazz" and "classical" music are closer in spirit and artistic execution than standard views of their difference comprehend?

NEW TIME, NEW ‘TET is an album with an implied "suite," in which Golson joins new compositions inspired by Giuseppi Verdi and Frederic Chopin to a standard jazz repertoire. The artistic result is philosophical musing that erupts into a street party. At one moment, vocalist Al Jarreau reprises Golson’s classic "Whisper Not," while at another moment, we encounter the uproarious (and comic) "Gypsy Jingle-Jangle."

On one side, Sonny Rollins’ mainstream "Airegin," on the other side, "Uptown Afterburn." Highlights abound from beginning to end. Golson’s haunting and floating "From Dream To Dream" is a brilliant vehicle for trombonist Steve Davis’ melodic elegance, while the insistent "Love Me In A Special Way" invokes nobility rare in any art form or cultural moment. If you recall classic film noir themes that often play through Golson’s capacious mind, then "Verdi’s Voice" awaits your attentive engagement – a composition that resurrects a tradition of songwriting, long gone, designated by the somewhat covert "Bronislau Kaper."

Why renew the Jazztet legacy? For his part, Golson notes that, "the task of re-conceiving a group with the strong identity and powerful longevity of the original jazztet is no obvious matter. The choice of new players is crucial, of course. They must be up to the job of making a new group sound every bit as identifiable and engaging as the earlier band – but not in competition with it. In short, the new Jazztet has to have its own artistic identity while it also carries on the highly acclaimed Jazztet tradition. I think we’ve done that here."

NEW TIME, NEW ‘TET is a uniquely engaging suite of songs that give each member of this juggernaut sextet room to blow. Nonetheless, the advance crafted by the new group’s audacious ambition — to link the classical music tradition to the post-bop jazz era — is achieved by the unit’s complex harmonic layering and (for example) the sheer joy by which Thelonious Monk’s "Epistrophy" romps effortlessly alongside Golson’s old-world chart, "Verdi’s Voice."