Few world-class jazz improvisers are comparably imaginative composers, but the British reeds player Tim Garland is that rarity. His inspired last album was the semi-orchestral Songs to the North Sky, but One returns to his early jazz-rock connections, with former Sting sideman Jason Rebello playing piano, organ and Fender Rhodes, guitarist Ant Law providing acoustic delicacy and electric firepower, world-music subtleties and hefty backbeats from the drummers, and a single, impassioned vocal account from Dionne Bennett (of Welsh folk-rock group the Earth) of a caustic Garland lyric on the arms trade.
The leader’s soprano-sax playing mingles an affectingly folksy piper’s warmth and a wry, Wayne Shorter-like pithiness. Shorter’s economical lyricism also tinges the more reflective themes. On tenor sax, Garland is almost in Average White Band territory with the funky Prototype, and ramps up the power with chordal bugged-sax passages in the later tracks. His sophistication overcomplicates these forthright idioms occasionally, but his melodic touch is almost always masterful, as is the playing of all the participants.
