Young Russian saxophonist Zhenya Strigalev plays alto-sax bebop as if testing its structural fastenings to breaking point. Shuttling between the London and New York jazz scenes, he’s hired some of the classiest sidemen in the game – with this set including the Blue Note trumpet star Ambrose Akinmusire, Brad Mehldau bassist Larry Grenadier and Charles Lloyd drummer Eric Harland. Strigalev backs his presumptuousness up with a set of originals here that join old-school jazz-making to a sassy street sharpness, and trigger some memorable improvising, not least from Gretchen Parlato’s intriguing New York pianist Taylor Eigsti. The Russian has a refreshing indifference to what’s supposed to go with what in 21st-century jazz, so the opening Kuku sounds like a riffy Stan Tracey theme played by a 1970s Herbie Hancock band. There are playfully hooty tunes, unjazzily bouncing ones, some tenderly affecting balladeering, and mellow horn interweavings like classic Blue Note sessions. Strigalev’s fusion of a tentatively probing, Art Pepper-like alto approach and a ducking-and-diving classic-bebop agility is at full throttle, the music seems to draw out Akinmusire’s most impressionistic qualities, and Harland’s drumming is jaw-dropping throughout.
