Search - Jimmy Greene :: Introducing Jimmy Greene

Best New Tenor!

A. K. L. | Steilacoom, WA USA | 01/26/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Here's a 2000 session by the same superior sextet that made Greene's debut recording, 'Brand New World,' in 1999. With complex arrangements by Greene's own hand, the group includes sax, trumpet, trombone and rhythm section. This exciting post-bop material can be compared to the work of Winard Harper, Robert Jospee, and Dave Holland, but in my opinion this is better because it has more spontaneous moments of player-interaction and more space for soloists to stretch out. If you love the post-bop work of those other bands but lament their lack of spontaneity and improvisation, then this is the ensemble for you.Greene and his fellow New Yorker, Joel Frahm, are the tenors of the time. They're more fresh and exciting than the princes of the jazz press - Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman - who were anointed too soon to let them get seasoned in the fire. Greene isn't green at all: he's seasoned in the fire of Dexter Gordon and Michael Brecker. But he definitely has his own voice, both as a tenor/soprano player and a composer.He is joined by fellow students from the great altoist Jackie Mclean's school of jazz in New York. Mclean claims Greene as one of his outstanding students: he came in as a teenager and in one week learned 'Cherokee' in 12 different keys. Greene went on to be first runner-up for the prestigeous Thelonious Monk Institute prize. This sextet includes the trombonist, Steve Davis, and pianist Aaron Goldberg, who played piano for the Johua Redman Quartet just after these recordings were made. Goldberg is simply the best, his accompaniment harmonically lush and rhythmically electric. He doesn't just comp, he interacts! But the pepper of this recipe is drummer Eric McPherson, another New York street kid who began by forming a group with tenor/alto Abraham Burton. If you have never heard McPherson play, you are in for a treat.
I think he's better than Blade, Harper, or Jospee, ticking behind the band like a whole shop full of Swizz watches, all keeping perfect time yet set to different zones. McPherson is just one reason to get both recordings by this sextet."