On A Boston Night
The opening track reminds you of Ornette Coleman's Golden Circle albums: the ominous bass drone, a ride cymbal hovering free, an alto saxophone plaintively keening, the acoustic space of a small jazz club. But it is Boston, not Stockholm, and it is 30 years down the road of expanding the forms in which jazz can take place.
"There's snow place like home" is a guitar/alto/soprano battle cry. Guitarist Peckham solos hard first but the horns won't let him alone, interrupting to holler the theme again. Doug Yates cuts in on alto with a six notes summons and then spills his guts in a piercing call to action. Molinari's bass creates suggestive uncertainty by shifting between ostinato (quite like Coleman's Izenzon) and a walking line. The first time through you miss the segue from Yates' alto to Garzone's soprano at 4:20. But only soprano saxophones can shriek that dizzying dervish. Garzone and Molinari write softer songs too: sweet, awkward waltzes ("First Dance"), homages that capture the essence and spirit of their subject ("The Mingus I knew"), even painfully slow misterioso dirges that barely break the silence ("Echoes of Rome").
The Boston scene is sometimes described as insular. "On a Boston Night" will startle outsiders. Molinari is a bassist/leader with a concept, and Garzone and Yates command fluency and fire on all four of their reed instruments. (Yates closes out "Nothing Cheap" with a bass clarinet seminar on intervallic leaps).
This album was recorded live at the Regattabar in Cambridge. The sonic quality is not audiophile (those horns are one blaring flat wall), but it is just right for Molinari"s music: in your face, a little raw, fiercely alive.
- Thomas Conrad
