Jack Walrath

Live at Smalls

Cellar Music Group

Trumpeter, composer, and arranger Jack Walrath joins the legends in the SmallsLive Living Masters Series, leading his long-running conventional jazz quintet in this live gig. This is a group that Walrath has been leading since 2010 – Abraham Burton on tenor saxophone, George Burton on piano, Boris Kozlov on bass, and Donald Edwards on drums. The rather opinionated Walrath emphasizes in the liners the value of a working band, stating that he is not a fan of ‘supergroups’ or hastily put together lineups. The tight interplay of this unit certainly corroborates this view.

Walrath, like every artist in this Living Masters Series, boasts a gleaming resume, having worked with a diverse list of icons including Ray Charles, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Muhal Richard Abrams, and more. His six original compositions are all lengthy, giving his bandmates ample room to stretch out and improvise. It’s mostly the kind of music we associate with Mingus – a mix of the traditional and modern, excursions into blues, African sounds and ideas, and music that is both ‘in’ and ‘out.’

The set kicks off with the fiery, hard swinging “Roadkill,” initially featured on his 2010 release Heavy Mirth. The deeply swinging tune features stellar solos from bassist Boris Kozlov, who has long been the musical director for The Mingus Big Band and thereby shares the same musical language as Walrath.  Tenor saxophonist Abraham Burton, (Rashid Ali, Walter Bishop Jr. Kenny Barron and countless more) is the perfect, energetic front-line partner for Walrath as displayed here and throughout. and from the bandleader. The piece sets the tone for an album of musical communication on the highest level. “A Bite in Tunisia” takes its inspiration obviously from the Dizzy Gillespie tune later popularized by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, delving into African sounds and rhythms with contemporary jazz harmony without resorting to the classic melodic strains of Gillespie’s piece. The piano solo from Philadelphian George Burton reveals his renowned eclectic approach, building from his rigorous classical training to supporting such artists in bop, post-bop, and avant from James Carter to Meshell Ndegeocello to the Sun Ra Arkestra. As one detects here, this band is eminently comfortable in different tempos, forms, and contexts, therein lies the connection to Mingus. “Grandpa Moses” and the edgy, lengthy “Left Turn on 86^th Street” illuminate this most clearly with a more complete view of the musical virtuosity of these players, including the impressive drummer Donald Edwards, who appears on several albums along with Kozlov on the mainstream Posi-tone label.

 “Mood For Muhal” nods to Walrath’s long-time stint in The Muhal Richard Abrams Orchestra and casts a completely different spell, pensive and melancholy through Walrath’s solo and George Burton’s brooding turn, which he builds dramatically, inspiring one of Walrath’s most inspired solos in the set, which begins in the stratosphere and then orbits several times as he conjures variations on the melody. We described the trumpeter as ‘opinionated’ at the outset and regarding this piece in the liners he states this, “I think one of the problems that I have with a lot of jazz nowadays is that people play the “changes,” and run a lot of patterns and scales that sound right. But you’ve got different choices with scales and for me, I like variations on the melody, theme, and variation…That is what my band and these musicians on this recording do. Why play a melody on a tune if you are not going to use it?” As such, Abraham Burton delivers a fervent improvisation on the melody before the quintet tampers down behind George Burton’s light chords and Kozlov’s robust bass.

Tempo ratchets up for the closer, “Sacrifice,” beginning with Edwards’ kinetic kit work, a heated Charlie Rouse-like excursion from Burton with background figures from Walrath and potent comping from George Burton. The rhythm section grows much calmer, allowing Walrath to build his lines gradually, with Burton’s far ranging frenzied piano inspiring the trumpeter further, bringing the solo to seemingly a definitive close, yet we hear Kozlov’s bassline fading out as if to harken in another piece. That’s a bit curious but doesn’t detract from a terrific overall set.

 Like another Smalls Living Masters Series artist, Jesse Davis, Walrath is relatively underrecognized but at 77 years old, plays with unbridled vitality. This should prompt further investigation of his catalog.

• Jim Hynes

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