Featured Artist: Mat Marucci - Doug Webb Trio feat: Ken Filiano

CD Title: 3 The Hard Way

Year: 2006

Record Label: CIMP

Style: Progressive

Review:

Recorded at the record label’s upstate New York studio, this trio pronounces an in-the-groove mindset, spanning variable tempos, tonal shades and levels of intensity.  And the track list appears in the exact order of the actual performances.  On the opener titled “Waltz for Therese,” Doug Webb’s blithe soprano sax phrasings ride atop a jazz-waltz motif, where a fragile beauty evolves into a frenzied, progressive jazz vista. No doubt, it’s a democratic engagement via the trio’s hybrid, loose-vibe and tightly-focused gait. 

The respective musicians afford themselves ample soloing space, where expansion and contraction counterbalances military march patterns, fluid ostinatos and probing frameworks.  As a tenor saxophonist, Webb morphs a gutsy attack with a raspy edge and soul-stirring chops.  On “Caught in the Webb,” he generates John Coltrane-like modalities by soaring skyward and re-engineering numerous melody lines.  Therefore, he transmits a sense of spirituality, which of course, is very indicative of Trane’s final phase. 

Bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Mat Marucci also lay down jazz-funk pulses.  But one of the many highlights resides within the trio’s mirroring of Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five,” as the musicians expound upon a  5/4 time signature, featuring Webb’s airy, yet slightly ominous tenor sax choruses.  Nonetheless, divergence and the artists’ notable camaraderie provides the so-called winning edge throughout. 

Record Label Website: http://www.cimprecords.com

Reviewed by: Glenn Astarita

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