The Musical Box

ahmad jamal: "it's magic"

Nearly four decades of age separate piano giant Ahmal Jamal and trumpet stylist Roy Hargrove. But on two feverishly streamlimed new albums, their grooves, if not their very jazz intellects, discover common ground.

Jamal, who turned 78 earlier this month, plays like a giddy, boppish teen on It’s Magic but displays the tough-knuckled tone of a prize fighter.

On Swahililand, a Jamal original the pianist first recorded in 1974, the introductory rolls on piano are dynamic indeed. Then the more modal turns in Jamal’s playing become almost symphonic. The richness of tone, performance power and changeling spirit all echo McCoy Tyner, but then the music brightens and, briefly, settles as a solo of restless melodic grace glides over the thick Motherland groove established by Jamal’s longtime touring band - bassist James Cammack and drummer Idris Muhammad augmented by veteran percussionist Manolo Badrena.

Jamal’s stylistic vocabulary is as vast as ever on It’s Magic. Though his band’s attack is full of boppish drive, Jamal is something of a jazz alchemist. He briefly quotes The Beatles in the midst of a fiery piano break on the album-opening Dynamo, tosses Ned Washington’s classic Wild is the Wind into a medley with the Sesame Street relic Sing and invests the album’s title tune, an Oscar-nominated gem by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne (from the 1948 film Romance on the High Seas) with a piano voice that sounds orchestral even without his band’s subtle support.

Aside from the addition of Badrena, there is no seriously uncharted territory on the album. Instead, it’s the continually youthful cast to Jamal’s playing that impresses most. On It’s Magic, he exhibits intuitive solo, compositional and interpretive skills that befit a jazz elder. But his tone and performance vibrancy remain outrageously youthful.   

roy hargrove: "earfood"

For Hargrove, part of a new traditionalist pack that emerged at the dawn of the ‘90s that hesitated for years before revealing their more contemporary leanings, Earfood is the sound of coming home. It’s a bright but often understated return to ensemble cool cut with his touring quintet. Here, Hargrove applies the lyricism, if not the very groove, of more progressive emsembles. No, that doesn’t mean the electric funk of Hargrove’s RH Factor band directly intrudes on these sessions. But there is a knowing lyricism, especially to the ballads on Earfood, that likely comes from some of his more stylistically daring globetrotting.

Brown, for example, flirts with post-bop before creating soulful dialogue between the trumpeter (especially in his muted solos) and pianist Gerald Clayton. Lou Marini’s Starmaker further hushes the tone to suggest Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage with more sustained cool and romanticism. But the killer is Mr. Clean, which was recorded over 30 years ago by Freddie Hubbard. The groove approaches funk while the piano becomes more strident and percussive as Hargrove unleashes his most unabashedly vibrant solos.

Capping it all, is a live version of Sam Cooke’s Bring It On Home to Me played as a gospel-tinged blast of soul and pop with Hargrove and saxophonist Justin Robinson engaging in playful tag team runs and boisterous unison leads.

Slap all of that on your plate and you will discover quickly what a feast Earfood is.