Review: Saxophonist/composer Michael Blake is one of these NYC players that either doesn’t sleep or has got to be the greatest time-manager around: he’s in John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards, Ben Allison’s Medicine Wheel, The Herbie Nichols Project, Slowpoke and leads his own Free Association. Here he gets to lead a sax/piano/bass/drums quartet in a slightly more “mainstream” fashion (read: tuneful, melody-solos-melody post-bop), but he’s clearly not applying to The Reboppers’ Society. (You know, those ever-so-tasteful, nattily dressed 20/30-something musicians who play like jazz stopped evolving in 1964, if not earlier.)
Elevated gives Blake an opportunity to shine in the “old school” manner of Lucky Thompson and Don Byas, two Swing Era tenor fellows that took to bop like the proverbial waterfowl to h2o – the smooth n’ elegant, slightly throaty-toned tenor of “Lucky Charms” seems to be a conscious (though certainly not slavish) tip-o’-the-fedora to them. The moody, yearning and urbane “Surfing Sahara” conjures images of foreign intrigue (romantic and/or political) with its haunting modal, Oliver Nelson-style melodic line and bossa nova-inspired rhythms, with Blake sounding like his own man with his finely honed, vocally-inflected soprano sax sound. The title track, a pretty yet lusciously foreboding ballad, evokes two other popular tenor figures of the 60s and 70s, the late, underrated Eddie Harris and the wizard Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Pianist Frank Kimbrough sparkles with lyricism like John Hicks and Tommy Flanagan and the impressionism of Jimmy Rowles, and Ben Allison and Mike Mazor are on-the-money solid, crisp and swinging throughout (on bass and drums respectively). Elevated pays tribute to a chapter of jazz’s past without being mired in it – though this set is “trad-minded,” there’s little déjà vu to be found. Blake and company impart to this session mucho piquancy and imagination, keeping it head ‘n’ shoulders above the pack.
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