1.
Hypnotic Suggestion
2. Once Upon a Summertime
3. Bemsha Swing
4. Just a Thought
5. Thinking of You
6. Beautiful Love
7. Detroit Scene
8. I Can’t Forget about You
9. Crazy Rhythm
Brad Goode – Trumpet
Adrean Farrugia – Piano
Kelly Sill – Bass
Dana Hall - Drums
Despite
being a long-time jazz fan, you can still
come across musicians you have never heard
of – and who knock you out at the first
encounter. For me, Brad Goode is one such
– a forty-something American trumpeter
who now resides in Denver (where he is
a professor of jazz studies at the University
of Colorado) but lived in Chicago for
many years, where he recorded this album.
The sleeve note says that Brad was particularly
interested here in "working with
elements of abstraction within standard
forms".
You
can hear what that means in Once Upon
a Summertime, where Brad starts with
a delicately muted solo which is unexpectedly
transformed into quickfire runs in the
style of Dizzy Gillespie. On other tracks,
too, his playing goes off in surprising
directions but this is deliberate, not
undisciplined. Brad apparently has the
technique to do exactly what he wants.
For example, on his own composition Just
a Thought, he makes the trumpet flutter
and growl (with help from a 1920s’ mute
with built-in kazoo!), while on Kalmar
& Ruby’s neglected Thinking of
You he soars like an eagle. On Crazy
Rhythm, he plays with the happy exhilaration
of a child let loose in a toyshop.
He
allows plenty of space for his sidemen
to show their paces, and Canadian pianist
Adrean Farrugia matches him in inventiveness,
while the Chicagoans on bass and drums
complete the quartet perfectly. Listen
to Bemsha Swing, where the whole
group dislocates Thelonious Monk’s tune
in a way which Monk would surely have
appreciated. If you like your jazz to
be adventurous, without the chaos that
often comes with the avant-garde, I can
recommend this album unreservedly.
Tony Augarde
CD Reviews
Delmark DE
567
