Free: Sam Yahel Trio

Expanded frontiers, new places. Music writers, the jazz ones in particular, love to say that such-and-such is taking such-and-such to new places. I've said such things myself.

Take a listen to the free download of Saba by The Sam Yahel Trio
(You'll need to register, but it's free and they'll pretty much leave you alone after that).

I'm not sure if it's a new place or not, but I like it just fine.

The CD is called Truth And Beauty (Origin). He's ably abetted by his long-time co-conspirators Joshua Redman and Brian Blade. It's about time Yahel got top billing.

Long live Joshua Redman

The SF JAZZ Collective plays Kansas City's Gem Theater on Sunday. It could be the concert of the year, although Roy Hargrove's show at the Folly back in January will be hard to top.

The Collective is, let's face it, a supergroup: Joshua Redman, Bobby Hutcherson and Renee Rosnes could all be called legends if they didn't in fact exist. The rest of the group is top notch.

Their first album focused on Ornette Coleman and was one of my favorites of 2005. That's an accomplishment because up until that time I didn't really care for Ornette Coleman. I'm still not slathering fan but thanks to the Collective, I get it (I think).

Another favorite album from Redman that same year was Momentum, which featured the shifting personnel that Redman and his collaborator Sam Yael call the Elastic Band.

The video above is a live performance of Jazz Crimes, which smokes. The excellent Brian Blade is on drums.