It was my intention to write mini-reviews of several more High Note CDs for this posting, but other matters intervened (see the previous item). One will have to suffice.
Vincent Herring, Ends And Means (High Note). We last encountered Herring ghosting Cannonball Adderley on a new Louis Hayes album. When he emerged in the 1980s, the young alto player was one of the few on his instrument to demonstrate a primary Adderley influence. That aspect of his playing has never diminished, but he has broadened his concept. I hadn’t heard him in a few years when this and the Hayes album arrived and was taken with the freshness of Herring’s playing within the Cannonball matrix. Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, Herring’s front-line partner in the Hayes group, is with him on four of the tracks, including “The Song Is Ended” decked out with altered harmonies in the bridge and a suspended ending that converts the standard song into a semi-modal piece.
“Ends and Means,” by the Slovenian pianist Renato Chicco, opens the album with an air of mystery resolving into thoughtful lyricism. On it, Herring roughens his tone, as Adderley often did, adding an edge to some of his more heartfelt passages. Benny Golson’s “Stablemates” is an established modern classic (note to the producer; the title is one word, not “Stable Mates”). Mulgrew Miller’s “Wingspan,” evoking Charlie Parker, is fast becoming another jazz standard. Both are ideal vehicles for Herring. On “Wingspan,” Pelt matches Herring’s bebop intensity, as does Danny Grissett, a pianist in his mid-twenties new to the New York jazz milieu but already established enough to be joining trumpeter Tom Harrell on tour in Europe this month. That honor and his recording with Herring would seem to announce that Grissett has arrived. The veteran bassist Essiet Essiet and the Swiss drummer Joris Dudli round out the rhythm section.
All hands execute an exercise in elation on Juan Tizol’s “Caravan.” The arrangement is built around a bass line in what a musicologist might identify as crippled cadence that works its way into exhilirating straight time. This album by a solid and satisfying alto man has a nice mix of familiar and new material.