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 Featured Albums
The Bennie Maupin
Quartet
EARLY REFLECTIONS
Cryptogramophone CD1137 (2008)
The
veteran Detroit-born multi-reedman Bennie Maupin has been criminally
under-recorded as a leader with just five previous albums under his own
name in the last 35 years. But Maupin, whose sinewy bass clarinet solos
helped define Miles Davis' landmark fusion album, "Bitches Brew," and
who spent most of the '70s riding shotgun with Herbie Hancock, appears
to have found a champion in Cryptogramophone, a boutique label based in
Los Angeles.
"Early Reflections" is a follow-up to the excellent "Penumbra" from
2006. Maupin is joined by a core quartet of Polish musicians with whom
he has developed a rewarding affinity through frequent European
sojourns. Based on a collectivist spirit, the music rejects standard
melody-solos-melody structures for a brushstroke flow of color,
textures, dialogue and modal improvisation. Short, sketch-like
compositions give way to more expansive floats of lyricism.
Maupin's circular tenor patterns on "Within Reach" wander languidly
through Michal Tokaj's gentle chordal landscapes, bassist Michal
Baranski and drummer Lukasz Zyta twitching alongside. Much of the music
whispers, and whether Maupin is playing tenor or soprano saxophone, bass
clarinet or alto flute, his playing is defined by patience. Even when
things heat up, as on "The Jewel and the Lotus," Maupin's best-known
composition, arranged here as a swirling, Coltrane-like waltz over an
infectious vamp, Maupin's soprano retains a wailing poise. (Detroit
Free Press)
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