Mark Turner & Gary Foster - Mark Turner meets Gary Foster

2019 CD release.

What a remarkable album. There has been a danger that in the process of researching it and tracking down, for example, the links that set it so authentically and deeply in the lineage of Lenny Tristano and Warne Marsh, that I would end up ignoring the fact that two very great saxophonists, a drummer and a bassist have created a unique document of a remarkable live concert, and a superb album. Mark Turner and Gary Foster are both fine players with rich discographies, but will they ever play better than they play together here? I doubt it.

The first rabbit-hole to disappear down is to answer the question “Who is Gary Foster?” He is a saxophonist/flautist/clarinettist who has been a Los Angeles studio and film soundtrack mainstay for decades. He has (I read on Wikipedia – he doesn’t actually have his own website) “performed on over 500 movie scores and with over 200 orchestras”. A couple of random studio credits might be his playing flute and recorder on Bob Dylan’s soundtrack for Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid from 1973, or, say, alto sax on Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable… with Love from 1991. And, rather more relevantly here, he was a close associate of Warne Marsh and is on Marsh’s classic quartet album Ne Plus Ultra from 1969. That team includes Dave Parlato – yup, well spotted: that’s Gretchen’s dad.

Gary Foster is a fabulous alto player. There were two sides to his craft that really got me hooked here. On the sixth track, the standard What’s New, he is straight in, with just the bass for company, playing the tune lyrically. This is the studio musician who wouldn’t actually know how to do anything less than a perfect take. It is persuasive, it is perfectly shaped, it is just gorgeous.

for the rest of the review:

https://londonjazznews.com/2019/07/15/mark-turner-meets-gary-foster/