Joshua Redman has been such a brilliant saxophone improviser for more than three decades that his unerring flawlessness at a spontaneous art almost becomes a tic. But his playful delight in music-making, a quality that swept from his eponymous debut release in 1993, has never faded. Redman’s 2023 first album for Blue Note was the covers-packed Where Are We, his first predominantly vocal venture, featuring the frail, borderline-tearful voice of young New Orleans-based singer Gabrielle Cavassa, herself a new Blue Note signing.
Perhaps to deflect this from looking like a label-steered career reset, Redman has cannily entitled its successor Words Fall Short, and included only one Cavassa vocal. Even more smartly, he has introduced a terrific new young road band on an all-original repertoire, and added acclaimed Chilean saxophonist Melissa Aldana and 19-year-old west coast trumpet phenomenon Skylar Tang as guests. The result is an album that feels more like an ideal balance of Redman’s own ingenuity and his ensemble rapport.
The opening A Message to Unsend stretches from a wistful tenor melody over a softly rolling piano ostinato through a Jarrett-trio-like feel and back, while the brisker So It Goes features a delightfully entwined and cool-jazzy duet between Redman’s and Aldana’s saxes. The shrewdly structured Icarus balances a steadily descending sax/trumpet theme with a rising countermelody; it heads the opposite way amid clattering percussion, sparking dramatic crescendos that the spirited Tang eagerly exploits.
The beautiful ballad Borrowed Eyes (the title taken from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road) joins Redman’s deep, wide-spaced tenor whisper with Phil Norris’s softly plucked bass solo, and Gabrielle Cavassa’s vocal on the closing Era’s End signs off a very classy Redman set with an exquisite vocal/tenor unison passage.
The expressive saxophone sound of the UK’sAndy Sheppardhas been steadily distilling to a Charles Lloydian essence of quivering upper-end sighs, terse boppish sprints and smoky exhalations – a sound long honed in the late great Carla Bley’s trio, but also in partnerships with formidable Swiss pianistMichael Arbenz. Sheppard and Arbenz entwine baroque counterpoint and classic jazz with gracefully inventive audacity onFrom Bach to Ellington – Live (Jazzfuel). Adventurous guitarist/composerAnt Lawreleases the excellentUnified Theories (antlaw.co.uk), a mix of intricate post-bop themes explored in blistering unison passages and unbridled improv. And young Israeli keyboardistSharon Mansur’s Trigger (ACT)showcases her ideas for a kind of contemporary jazz/rock fusion in its torrent of Bach-rocking piano choruses, synth-reeds sounds, dreamy spacewalks, balletically folksy melodies, and jazz-trio empathy – even if her undoubted improv skills can sound a bit cramped by all the hooks.