Label: Edition Records, 2023
Personnel - Chris Potter: tenor saxophone; Craig Taborn: piano; Scott Colley: bass; Marcus Gilmore: drums.
The indispensable jazz saxophonist Chris Potter is gifted enough to create fantastic worlds out of a traditional setting. This is true even when he’s not playing his own tunes. Recorded live at the Village Vanguard, the most desired venue of New York, Got the Keys to the Kingdom displays refreshing non-original material that bolsters the bandleader’s versatility, huge sound, and sophisticated language. Potter is backed by a stupendous rhythm section composed of inventive pianist Craig Taborn, confident bassist Scott Colley, and intrepid drummer Marcus Gilmore.
His genre-crossing aptitude is immediately visible on the opener “You Gotta Move”, an African-American spiritual song popularized by the hill country blues singer/guitarist Mississippi Fred McDowell. This soulful interpretation seems to amalgamate modal jazz, post-bop and soul music with passion, and encapsulates powerful statements from saxophone and piano. Taborn, who starts his improvisation tastefully casual and ends it wildly intervallic, helps to keep an ultimate 12-beat cycle vamp alive for Gilmore’s expansions. The drummer shines even brighter on the title track, another spiritual played with a specific, challenging tempo.
“Nozani Na” is provided with exotic percussive flavors and colorful tapestries. The dancing quality of this Amazonian folk tune, transcribed by Edgar Roquette-Pinto and the great Heitor Villa-Lobos, contemplates serpentine melodies and exuberant solos. By its side, Charlie Parker’s infrequently played “Klactoveedsestene” evokes the good old times as a grooving bop number that swings aplomb, and also shakes during the bar exchanges with the drummer. Before that, Potter delivers an absurdly energetic improv over a sturdy rhythmic grid of bass and drums.
If the aforementioned pieces feel grounded, then the kind and soft-tempered pieces such as Billy Strayhorn’s “Blood Count” and Jobim/Buarque’s “Olha Maria” are hypnotizing in all their magnificent splendor. The former, enigmatically introduced by Taborn, has its dour, dreamy feel magnified by the rubato tempo; the latter, fusing classical innuendo and modal jazz intonation, gives a voice to Colley, who provides qualitative introductory description and wonderful accompaniment.
Potter, who has the right stuff for every occasion, is caught here in full grasp of his capabilities. Every new work from him is an event, and here, his colleagues respond instinctively and expertly to his vibrancy. The results are stellar.
Favorite Tracks:
01 - You Gotta Move ► 03 - Blood Count ► 05 - Olha Maria