Murray, David - Blues for Memo CD (Mega Blowout Sale)
SKU
23-MTM 256
“Murray is our greatest living tenor sax player, approached only perhaps by Mark Turner and Joe Lovano. He is equally fluent on bass clarinet, his other axe, though it is his tenor – thick, strong, capable of moving from muted lyricism to harsh squealing and talking in tongues in the same song — that is my favorite. He is not only an inspired soloist but a master group leader, willing to stretch his limits from album to album and group to group.
Here, his principal partner is a poet, Saul Williams, but he varies the group behind Williams –sometimes the base group, sometimes the addition of Craig Harris’s trombone, or Jason Moran on a second keyboard, a Turkish musician on a native string instrument, Mingus Murray on electric guitar on one cut. On more cuts than not, the music veers in beat toward hip hop, an appropriate choice when backing a black poet with obvious street affinities. (The choice of Nasheet Watts as drummer here is inspired.)
I’m not a lover of jazz with poetry but Williams is good at it and the music surging up behind him, especially Murray’s, is excellent. This isn’t an album I’ll play often but it’s a good one and I enjoyed listening to it quite a bit.
The album is dedicated to two musicians, both recently deceased. The one is Turkish jazz artist Mehmet Ulug, aka Memo. The other is jazz giant, composer and player Butch Morris, whose influence on Murray’s octet albums three decades ago was major.”-David Keymer
- LabelMotema
- UPC181212002560