Description
As good as tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano’s recent quartet albums featuring piano master Hank Jones were, they didn’t prepare us for the sublimity of this two-man encounter. Duets Live has it all: brilliant and spirited individual playing, exceptional rapport, a terrific mix of songs and a luminous awareness of jazz in all its varied forms. What makes Lovano and Jones so compatible, even though they are separated by more than three decades, is the ease with which they each straddle and move back and forth across the line beween modern and pre-modern (in this, Lovano recalls Coleman Hawkins, one of the giants Jones backed). Much of the material is steeped in classic bop, but Jones points the way back to an earlier golden era with his lambent sparkle and Lovano comes at songs like “Charlie Chan” (his salute to Charlie Parker), Thelonious Monk’s “Four in One,” and Tadd Damerson’s “Soultrane” from consistently fresh angles even as he applies his classic husky sound. Still a force at 88, Jones elegantly frees three of his late brother Thad’s tunes from their big band trappings and in the solo spotlight pulls out stops on the standard, “Oh! Look at me Now!” It’s a performance of gusty expression and poetic delicacy, slyness and warmth, and endless smiles. Is it too much to ask for a volume two? –Lloyd Sachs
