Joe Lovano

This is another welcome offering from the Lovano quartet featuring the late, great Hank Jones. Recorded on August 14, 2005 at the Newport Jazz Festival, the album captures the Joe Lovano Quartet featuring a then 87-year-old Jones, as well as bassist George Mraz, and drummer Lewis Nash.

Lovano is one of those musicians who have been around for so long and achieved so much that a new release is more or less guaranteed to be good. But this album is a classic and this is not an overstatement. A classic, by its own definition, is something "of the first or highest quality, class, or rank," and this surely fits the bill.

Capturing the quartet’s entire 6-song set, which opened with the swaggering Lovano blues “Big Ben” and featured songs drawn from the band’s studio albums including 2 songs written by Hank’s brother Thad Jones (“Don’t Ever Leave Me” and “Kids Are Pretty People”) before closing with a rollicking performance of Oliver Nelson’s “Six and Four” to wild applause.

A typically robust display of mastery by the saxophonist across all six tracks as well as the other band members which thrive always hard-grooving and swinging.
 
Recommended!

PERSONNEL:

JOE LOVANO, tenor sax
HANK JONES, piano
GEORGE MRAZ, bass
LEWIS NASH, drums

Recorded at Newport Jazz Festival 2015.

TRACKS.

01. Big Ben
02. Bird's Eyes View
03. Don't Ever Leave Me
04. I'm All For You
05. Kids Are Pretty People
06. Six and Four