Earlier recordings of the saxophone player Jaleel Shaw, known for his work with Stefon Harris and Dave Holland, includes Soundtrack of Things to Come (2013, Changu) and issued 5 years earlier also on Changu – Optimism. The latter is with a line-up that included both Robert Glasper and Jeremy Pelt as starry components.
Tunes include a tribute to Boston called ‘Beantown’ where the Philadelphian Shaw, 47, studied at the Massachusetts state capital’s music college – one of the top places in the world for jazz education, Berklee.
He’s with bassist Ben Street awesome on Just issued this year with Billy Hart; pianist Lawrence Fields who was on Shaw’s Soundtrack of Things to Come and who I heard play live in Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah’s band in Sligo in 2014; guitarist Lage Lund (again a player who has worked with Shaw before – on earlier album Optimism); vibist Sasha Berliner who joins on some tracks and who is playing Dublin venue The Cooler on the 18th and the Hawk’s Well, Sligo on the 23rd; and New Orleanian drummer Joe Dyson who was with Fields on Adjuah’s 2017 album The Emancipation Proclamation.
Other tune titles refer to the great writer James Baldwin and to Tamir Rice a 12-year-old killed by police in Cleveland.
There’s a stark, penetrating focus to all the sax statements on an album that is wise, serious and affecting.
Berliner is on ‘Gina’s Ascent,’ written by Shaw for a cousin who died 5 years ago. Other dedicatees are Meghan Stabile and the Glasperian saxophonist Casey Benjamin who died aged just 45 in March last year. Find quality time and meaningful personal headspace to listen to the album soon. It’s more than the notes – the message music also rings true in the air.
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