Kenny Barron Quintet Images CD

Feat:Stefon Harris/Anne Drum- Mond/Kiyoshi Kitagawa/Kim Thom

Personnel: Kenny Barron (piano); Anne Drummond (flute, alto flute); Stefon Harris (vibraphone); Kiyoshi Kitagawa (double bass); Kim Thompson (drums).
Barron's quintet here with Anne Drummond on alto and flute, drummer Kim Thompson, Kiyoshi Kitagawa on bass, and vibraphonist Stefon Harris is a powerhouse of lyrical and percussive counterpoint and exotic voices. One listen to Barron's "Jasmine Flower," with its Eastern melody and exceptional interplay between the pianist and Harris' vibes that is knotty but never jagged, is enough to convince. Elsewhere, as on Harris' "The Lost Ones," where Barron's middle register ostinati are given free rein to punctuate the skeletal melody and warm texture of the tune's body, is so elegant it's moving. The lilting flute line played by Drummond, just ahead of the impressionistic beat and highlighted by the vibes, makes this an amiable yet compelling listen. This is followed with a wonderfully light-touched read of Bud Powell's "Hallucinations." Barron's touch is breezy and effective; he gets to the complex lyric fragments in the center of the structure and trots them out for the band's interaction. Harris' solo has just the right tautness to keep it grounded and pulsing. The reading of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" extrapolates the Latin melody from the tune's heart and makes it a rhythmic construct with Barron and Harris winding around Kitagawa in an easy but swirling pace to the top of the figure and then into the maelstrom of the solo exchanges. In sum, this is another fine date by a pianist who seems to restlessly climb another rung with every outing even though he has been at the top of his game for decades. ~ Thom Jurek
Hard-bop pianist Kenny Barron has been a "musician's musician" for decades, playing behind such towering figures as Dizzy Gilles pie, Yusef Lateef, Stan Getz, and Freddie Hubbard. But in the 1990s, Barron began to take center stage, leading mostly trios through a series of albums that established him as a fine composer of intricate but madly swinging tunes. On IMAGES, he's assembled a somewhat unusual lineup, dispensing with any reeds or brass--just piano, flute, vibes, bass, and drums. The result is a set of bright, deceptively easygoing straight-ahead jazz--imagine the Modern Jazz Quartet after a long vacation in Brazil, where they drank lots of coffee.
While this album seems mellow on first listen, there's a lot going on under the surface: sharp time-signature changes (a la Dave Brubeck), breakneck tempos, Brazilian undertones, and complex, darting but always pretty melodies. Not to overlook the soloing; Barron consistently dazzles with his lean, Thelonious Monk-tinged style, Stefon Harris's vibes glisten like morning sunlight, and Anne Drummond's flute is both soothing and spirited simultaneously. IMAGES is recommended to not only Barron and jazz-piano fans, but those who think music can't be intensely artistic and accessible at once.