snobb
After a three year gap, one of the most most interesting sax player of today's American creative jazz scene Steve Lehman returns with "The People I Love" album. Same trio as on 2012 "Dialect Fluorescent" is improved with another new generation leader - pianist Craig Taborn.
Radically different from Lehman last studio work - electronics and rap filled "Steve Lehman & Sélébéyone"(2016), this new album represents his return back to jazz roots, possibly Lehman's most jazz-rooted album to date. Framed with "Prelude","Interlude" and "Postlude" - three short acoustic sax/piano duets with Taborn, "The People I Love" contains Lehman's usual dry but warm take on some of his older compositions and some covers too. Most unusual between chosen covers is "qPlay" from Brits IDM duo Autechre - fully acoustic minimalist composition with melancholic tune and repetitive rhythmical structure.
Another cover is a knotty energetic take on Swiss-based American guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel two decades old song "A Shifting Design". Lehman's own "Echoes" is combined to one piece with Jeff "Tain" Watts' mainstream "The Impaler"(originally - with Branford Marsalis on tenor sax and Wynton Marsalis on trumpet). Lehman's "Curse Fraction", originally recorded with quintet in 2007,here sounds much relaxed,minimalist and even melancholic.
Taborn's addition (for the first time ever) gives some warmness and better balance for the usually scientifically perfect Lehman band sound, the choice of material looks like a successful step too. More intimate than Lehman's bigger bands, this quartet offers best from both Lehman and Taborn music in one place.