Joe Lovano US Five

With Folk Art, his 21st recording for Blue Note, Joe Lovano debuts Us Five, a dynamic new ensemble and one of the most exciting of his acclaimed career. On Folk Art, recorded in November after a preparatory week at New Yorks famed Village Vanguard, Joe presents a collection of nine original compositions for tenor saxophone, straight alto saxophone, alto clarinet, tarogato, aulochrome, and percussion; James Weidman on piano; Esperanza Spalding on bass; and Otis Brown and Francesco Mela onas Lovano likes to put itdrums and cymbals. He explores a wide spectrum of colors, sounds, and feelings, organizing the flow into passages for quintet, quartets, trios, duos, and solos within the unit, exploiting to the fullest the various rhythm section possibilities afforded by the two-drummer format. The better to force the music onto unexpected paths, Lovano offers his personnelexcepting Weidman, each musician is an associate of recent vintagewide latitude to interpret the raw materials with freedom to take shape and crystallize as we play. He himself navigates the fluid sonic terrain with utter authority, moving seamlessly from inside to outside feels, finding melodic pathways, consistently projecting the vocalized tone, uncanny time feel, and penchant for creative dialogue that have made so many of his Blue Note recordings essential listening. Ive always tried to be very free with inside approaches, and to be really in there when its freer music, what they call outside, he says. The music comes out of our individual roots, and those combinations emerge in the music. Francesco Mela is from Cuba; Otis Brown is a real New York drummer; Esperanza has beautiful lyrical approach; the way James conceives jazz music, blues, gospel, and freer forms. Its an ongoing study on how to play together with mutual respect and an egoless approach. Its the first time Ive put together a group with people who arent my generation, who havent totally developed their approach, who are experiencing things for the first time. Everyone has fresh eyes and fresh ears, and this gives me ideas when I put together compositions that I had never played with anyone else before. Everybody is on their toes. It reminds me of when Tony Williams and Herbie played with Miles as real young cats, or when McCoy Tyner first played with Coltrane.