Featured Artist: Shook - Russo Quartet
CD Title: Featuring Greg Gisbert
Year: 2006
Record Label: Summit Records
Style: Straight-Ahead / Classic
Musicians: Amy Shook (bass), Pat Shook (tenor saxophone), Frank Russo (drums), Tim Young (piano), Greg Gisbert (trumpet)
Review:One of the great advances for jazz starting roughly in the 1990s was the rise of an almost limitless number of small, almost boutique, jazz record labels. The model of these labels appears to have been taken from the Criss Cross Records formula, where jazz artists could create straight-ahead and quasi-straight-ahead small group jazz embedded in the concept of freedom of expression and original composition, albeit on a shoestring budget. These labels, such as Winter & Winter and the one who’s disc is reviewed here, Summit Records, began to take on the great names of jazz, along with those deserving of more attention, as major labels tossed off their artists with disappointing rapidity. The result has certainly been a major gain for jazz fans. Unfettered by grand schemes, the artists are presented in the raw state. Call it a rebirth of the 1960s' Blue Note Record formula – and after the excess of production and packaging during the 1970s such a return is well appreciated.
Bassist Amy Shook hails originally from Idaho with degrees earned from the Lionel Hampton School of Music. Husband/tenor saxophonist Pat holds degrees from the same University of Idaho and the University of North Texas. Currently she has a growing reputation as a freelance musician in the Washington D.C. area while Pat is the lead tenor player in the U.S. Army Jazz Ambassadors. They’ve joined together with New York City native, Towson University professor and drummer/percussionist Frank Russo. With the added voice of fellow U.S. Army Jazz Ambassador pianist Tim Young, the four have created one of D.C.’s newest jazz combos. This CD, Featuring Greg Gisbert, is their debut recording as a group, and includes, as the name implies, New York trumpet stalwart Greg Gisbert, for a collection of nine original compositions.
Highlights of the disc include the obvious work of Gisbert. Perhaps best known outside of New York for his work with Maria Schneider’s big band, he is a trumpeter of uncommon taste, ability and feeling. What he brings to the compositions is a voice that seeks outside of the often overused harmonic scalular patterns as taught by so many college professors throughout America and expertly codified by educators such as Jamey Aebersold. His lines don’t so much run as they search for points of relation and then use those relations to poke and prod harmonic conceptual context from Young’s chordal voice choices. A real feature is his work on “Somewhere Within.” From his sound to ideas, you hear encapsulated in his psyche the whole of where jazz is coming from and moving to in the early 21st century.
Bassist Amy provides solid support and Russo is truly a drummer on the rise, working solidly throughout. His time is coming and his tasteful licks within the confines of “Finger Food” show he has what it takes to move forward. While all of the compositions are mainly of medium speed variety, there are some standouts. Young’s “Somewhere Within” builds in a hauntingly and meditatively familiar Tom Harrell sort of manner, while Pat’s “No Answer” is a fun Steve Swallowish hip series of figures that combine and turn over each other in a quickly cascading series of melodically attractive lines. Amy, no compositional slouch, provides a unique swirling spin in her “Alice With Blue Flannel Hair.” D.C. is lucky to have such a young and growing group of musicians in it’s midst.
Tracks: Wollie's Favorite Dress, No Answer, Waltz For Nanami, Finger Food, Somewhere Within, Alice With Blue Flannel Hair, Only Words, Penuche Sauce and Sweet Begonia (for Mom)
Record Label Website: http://www.summitrecords.com/
Artist's Website: http://www.dcjazz.com/frankrusso/index.cfm
Reviewed by: Thomas R. Erdmann
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