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Branford Marsalis – Romare Bearden RevealedMarsalis Music 0011661330627
Branford Marsalis, saxophones; Joey Calderazzo, piano; Eric Revis, bass; Jeff “Tain” Watts, drums, with guests.
The album was conceived following a request from the Romare Bearden foundation to make a record to coincide with the National Gallery of Art’s retrospective on the artist’s work. Bearden’s paintings were inspired by jazz tunes and songs pre-dating the 1940s and if this seems to you a somewhat bizarre choice of album for this quartet to make, you will be agreeing with me. The musicians are perfectly competent to deliver the material, but why bother? Why bother re-recording that which already exists and not even re-inventing it? New, musical interpretations of the paintings or modern interpretations of these old tunes would have made for an entirely different concept and probably some new music, but this album seems wasteful of the quartet’s talents. One comes to realise of course that only tracks 3 and 7, Seabreeze and Steppin’ on the Blues are performed by the quartet. The rest see the band diluted or befouled in some unneeded way or other by guest appearances, whose presence seems intended to make this re-recording quite possible: Wynton Marsalis of course, amongst others, a natural for such a venture, with his prosaic ideas of what jazz today ought to be about. I can see little entertainment in this album, but I am unable to dismiss it completely. Listen to tracks 3 and 7, where you will hear the lean quartet playing sincerely, as I’m sure they always do. Listen too to track 4, J Mood, actually written by Wynton and an entirely expressive and attractive piece of slow blues. So, not all bad eh? Alas, for the rest, even track 7 seems an unnecessary venture when compared with the original from Lovie Austin and Tommy Ladnier, while Jelly Roll’s Jungle Blues can still be had and does a better job. It’s an illustration of an illustration, but is entirely without comment and that’s why it fails.
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