Wayne Escoffery’s second release with Smoke features long-time collaborators David Kikoski and bassist Ugonna Okegwo. Sadly, the fourth member of his quartet, drummer Ralph Peterson, died in 2021. His place is taken by his star pupil, Mark Whitfield.
Escoffery grew up in London and settled in Connecticut where he studied with Jackie McLean. He’s worked with Herbie Hancock, Eddie Henderson and Wallace Roney, and is a musical director of the Mingus Big Band. He teaches at Yale University.
On Like Minds, his quartet features three guests – trumpeter Tom Harrell, in whose band Escoffery and Okegwo played, guitarist Mike Moreno and vocalist Gregory Porter. The attractively boppish title track features the leader on soprano and then tenor saxophone, with Kikoski on electric piano and Moreno on guitar.
The mournful, moving My Truth, at a dirge-like tempo, is an album highlight. It features vocalist Gregory Porter, whose affecting baritone is supported by the leader’s sensitive obbligato on tenor saxophone; there’s an intense, melancholic solo by Tom Harrell.
Porter returns for an affecting jazz interpretation of the reggae classic By The Rivers Of Babylon. Escoffery has Jamaican heritage, and rightly regards the song as a rastafari equivalent of spirituals like Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, where the oppression of enslaved peoples is translated into biblical imagery.
Mingus’s Nostalgia in Times Square has a slow funk groove, with Kikoski on Rhodes and Harrell on trumpet. Sincerely Yours is a double contrafact. It’s a variation on Freddie Hubbard’s Dear John, a contrafact of Coltrane’s Giant Steps – itself informed by the middle eight of Richard Rodgers’ Have You Met Miss Jones!
The quartet pays tribute to its late drummer with Peterson’s gorgeous Song Of Serenity, which the composer first recorded with his Fo’tet on The Reclamation Project (1995). Finally, there’s a compelling revival of Duke Pearson’s minor-key Idle Moments, a classic Blue Note composition. A richly rewarding release.
Discography
Like Minds; Nostalgia; Sincerely Yours; My Truth; By The Rivers Of Babylon; Song Of Serenity; 13 Treasure Lane; Idle Moments; Shuffle; Lookin’ For Leroy (57.20)
Escoffery (ts); Tom Harrell (t); Mike Moreno (g); David Kikoski (p); Ugonna Okegwo (b); Mark Whitfield, Jr. (d); Gregory Porter (v). No date or location given.
Smoke Sessions Records SSR-2303
