WYNTON MARSALIS - Marsalis Plays Monk

Marsalis Plays Monk: Standard Time Vol 4

(Sony)

****
Review: Graham Reid

The first of eight Marsalis albums (collect seven, get the eighth free) scheduled for release between now and year's end, this one also picks up his ongoing Standard Time series of acknowledgements of previous jazz styles or masters.

Recorded in 94, this salute to Thelonious Monk finds Marsalis and some longtime contemporaries at their best as they work off Monk's sophisticated, angular blues phrasing and loosen their bow-ties for an approach which is respectful but brings something of their own to bear.

The septet includes Herlin Riley (drums) and Reginal Veal (bass), with Eric Reed contributing his own inventive style on piano, Monk's instrument.

There are rewards throughout these 14 tracks: on the stately Monk's Mood it's the interplay between trombonist Wycliffe Gordon and the tenors of Walter Blanding and Victor Goines with Wessell Anderson's alto.

There are skitterish bop horns all over Four in One, Marsalis confidently lays back in the hazy ballad Reflections before equally woozy horns come in, and there's good humour in Marsalis' laughing wah-wah on Worry Later, which swings out on tenors.

There are occasional disappointments (Reed's constrained solo on In Walked Monk, where he walks away from the challenge), yet while these players have grown happily into their roles as stenographers for the living traditions of jazz, they are also experts on mining nuances and delivering punches of their own.

Intelligent arrangements, less of that self-satisfaction which was too long the hallmark of this neo-con school, and - although not all of this is profound - plenty of inarguably exceptional playing.