Search - Dave Liebman :: Conversation

Easily his best

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 12/12/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Dave Liebman, Coltrane-influenced jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist, has had a creditable, if seldom spectacular, career. I've enjoyed many of his previous outings both as leader and sideman, but none more than this. Here, he has completely come into his own voice, a vibrant and declamatory sound on both his instruments.The core of this band (Liebman; Vic Juris, g; Tony Morino, acoustic, Stik bass) has been together for some years now. The addition of Marko Marcinko, a player not known to me, on drums, seems to have been the catalyst to vault this band from competence to brilliance--once again validating the observation that the best jazz these days is being made by bands, not thrown-together aggregations of stars. There's an entirely welcome new-found openness and confidence in this band, almost swagger, that's been missing from previous outings.There's also a very attractive programmatic thing happening here that sets this disc apart from your average jazz outing. Take "Tickle Bath," for example. It starts with Liebman's solo sax sounding remarkably like his young daughter probably sounded when he tickled her in the bath. "Anubis," the longest and most ambitious cut, with it's very cool Middle Eastern soprano sax/oud-like guitar vibe, coupled with smart drum/percussion voicings--certainly his most expansive and successful song to date. It's not that Liebman hasn't used this approach before, e.g., on Water, but it's never been anywhere near as effective as it is here. A good deal of the success of this disc belongs to Vic Juris. Featuring an astonishingly wide palette of sounds from acoustic (his preferred and most distinctive voice here) and electric guitar, he always seems to find the exact right timbre and sonic signature to perfectly complement the leader's adventurous writing and playing. It's weird, but sometimes it just takes a long time for the full complement of beauty and gravitas to find proper expression in seasoned jazz artists. Who knows why it happens, but we saw something similar happen with Terence Blanchard's Bounce and Randy Brecker's Wide Angles released earlier in 2003. I'm here to say, however, that what's going on here is even more remarkable and satisfying that the brilliant discs those artists released earlier this year.Right drummer, Haronic Convergence, their turn--I don't know what, nor do I care. I'm just happy to bask in the sonic glory of this transcendent music, some of the very best in what will certainly go down as an incredibly rich year of acoustic improvised music."