Label: Greenleaf Music, 2022

Personnel - Dave Douglas: trumpet; Jon Irabagon: reeds; Matt Mitchell: piano; Linda May Han Oh: bass; Rudy Royston: drums.

American trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas usually operates in a refined avant-garde setting, which, being accessible, often lets his peculiar tone and impressive range come to the fore. The excellent co-conspirators in this quintet started to work together in 2011, leaving such a strong impression with albums such as Be Still (2012), Time Travel (2013), and Brazen Heart (2015). The new pair of albums - Songs of Ascent Book 1: Degrees (the object of this review) and Book 2: Steps - are inspired by biblical Psalms and their content was composed in the process of making Douglas' previous outing, Secular Psalms (2022).

“Never Let Me Go” is an original but sounds like a free-ish interpretation of Jay Livingston’s jazz standard of the same name because its poignant main melody is perceptibly outlined as motifs during masterly dissertations by Douglas and pianist Matt Mitchell. Sandwiched between them, the formidable saxophonist Jon Irabagon speaks with as much eloquence as energy.

“Deceitful Tongues” is pronounced with intervallic expertise and impeccable accentuation. After the focused horn stretches and before the final thematic melody, there’s amazing interplay between the rhythm team. The compositions are perfectly balanced and the playing unhesitant and strong. This is put on display on the incredibly dynamic tracks “A Fowler’s Snare”, a bop dish made with avant-garde spices, pure synchronicity, and juxtaposed horn lines in exaltation; and the playful “Lift Up My Eyes”, which revels in brightly-hued ascendant movements and polyphonic exertions that occasionally collide. Bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Rudy Royston take succinct individual initiatives on the latter tune.

More sensitive and reassuring, “Peace Within Your Walls” is less angular and less harmonically demanding. Douglas and Irabagon are two different voices that spark off each other in pleasant conversation. The album comes to an end in explorative post-bop mood with “Mouths Full of Joy”.

Having matured into a rounded musician of poetic mien and richness of timbre, Douglas transmits an infectious magnetism in his Songs of Ascent.