New York trumpeter Ralph Alessi’s flawless technique and ability to draw on the jazz tradition while avoiding its cliches won him admiration long before his ECM debut with Baida – but that quietly biting album, released in 2013, was a step-change. Drew Gress and Nasheet Waits remain on bass and drums, with pianist Gary Versace replacing the original group’s Jason Moran. Versace’s creativity as a harmonic stimulus and a spinner of dramatic solos is different to Moran’s, and these 10 new Alessi pieces sound like the next chapter. A phlegmatic melancholy infuses the soft elisions and gleaming high-register calls of Here Tomorrow and Window Goodbyes, but if an impassive wistfulness is often in evidence, there’s also a busy, postbop snap to the nimble Smooth Descent and the tight turns and wide interval distances of Gone Today, Here Tomorrow. Gress and Waits, always reacting to their partners’ melodies, continue to sound like one of contemporary jazz’s most responsive rhythm sections.
