The Beastly Beatitudes

Albumbeschreibung

This disc is a series by Morgan Powell as a tribute to his 20-year professional and personal history with trumpeter Ray Sasaki. They claim to be doing another one together in 2015. Conceptually, The Beastly Beatitudes is confusing as a recording since other than the two principals there are no credits given, though other instruments are clearly heard: clarinet, piano, saxophones, even strings. And this music is composed and conducted, not improvised. Musically The Beastly Beatitudes is as compelling as any post-bop expressionistic vanguard jazz. The compositions are slow in pace, wildly varied in texture and timbral effects, harmonically sophisticated, and played with great restraint and tenderness. What there is to hang onto is gorgeous; what there isn't somehow makes its way into your skull anyway, and you can pick out a mode or two in "Duet II," an intervallic figure that repeats itself in "LKP," and a series of staccato phrases that create a kind of theme in "Beatitudes" that cycles around, slightly altered each time they're played. Perhaps the finest moment on the disc, however, is the first track, "Alone," where Sasaki plays a piece designed to show his own color range on the instrument and how his line lilts and falls into the next without ever breaking the continuity of the idea being put forth. For fans of Sasaki or Morgan, this is pretty much indispensable.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo