Label: Contagious Music, 2020
Personnel - Dayna Stephens: tenor and baritone saxophones; Ben Street: acoustic bass; Eric Harland: drums.
Well-versed saxophonist Dayna Stephens went for an appealing trio recording session with longtime collaborators, bassist Ben Street and drummer Eric Harland. These musicians were featured on Stephens’ very first recording, The Timeless Now (CTA Records, 2007), and one composition from that album - “Lost And Found” - appears on Liberty with a new outfit, passing a sensation of downtempo jazz without really being it. The warmly connected bass lines join the laid-back drumming to support the darkly wistful tones of Stephens, who, on this one, plays baritone sax with asserted pensiveness.
Setting the tone for what follows, the opener, “Ran”, was written for film and music producer Randi Norman, conjuring supple melodies and swinging with easygoing familiarity. Stephens populates his tenor solo with smart note choices and rhythmic figures, while Street, finding pungently strutting routes throughout, also sets his bass to speak freely, having mainly a hi-hat rhythmic pulsation in the background. “Wil’s Way”, the closing track, is another composition penned to a friend, this time the organist Will Blades, with whom Stephens recorded on the albums Sketchy (Doodlin Records) by the organist and on his own New Day (Vegamusic), in 2007 and 2014, respectively. In this re-configured version, we find the saxophonist grooving with a blend of hard-bop and post-bop energies, well anchored in the rhythm section’s dynamic thrust.
The group’s work is similarly extroverted on “Loosy Goosy”, whose boppish exuberance hearkens to Joe Henderson and Sonny Rollins’ musical universes. Occasional Eastern-tinged spells are cast during the trade offs with Harland. This number was previously recorded, first appearing on the album Today is Tomorrow (Criss Cross, 2012).
Whereas “Tarifa” is a hymn-like African celebration that makes a picturesque sonic detour with plenty of rhythmic flair, “Planting Flowers”, composed by pianist Aaron Parks when he was 15, finds the trio sauntering with a casual, happy posture. They exert a fair amount of charm here.
The respect Stephens has for Coltrane is mirrored in two pieces where the latter’s genius is molded and taken to entirely new places. While “Faith Leap” is an unfaltering, breezy exercise founded on “Giant Steps”, where the bass follows the footsteps of the saxophone over a period of time, “Kwooked Stweet” is a contrafact of “Straight Street” and comes conducted with emphatic rhythmic accentuations and expressive interplay. By the end, Harland’s talkative drums can be heard over a sliding bass vamp designed for that purpose.
Shaped with equal parts sturdiness and grace, the 11 tracks of Liberty, Stephens’ ninth recording as a leader and first trio output, flourish with invention, suspension, and resolution. Above all, the group brings emotion into play, building and releasing tension in a stylized fashion.
Grade B+
Favorite Tracks:
04 - Lost and Found ► 06 - Loosy Goosy ► 07 - Tarifa