Following a roughly seven-year break, Buster Williams returned to recording with 2018's Audacity, a stylish debut for the Smoke Sessions label featuring his quartet. While he had stayed active teaching and performing with others, Williams hadn't led a group for a studio album since the mid-2000s. If Audacity was a revelation, reintroducing the journeyman bassist's urbane and nuanced approach to acoustic post-bop, then his Smoke Sessions follow-up, 2023's Unalome (the Buddhist symbol for individual transcendence), is a ...
Read More
Following a roughly seven-year break, Buster Williams returned to recording with 2018's Audacity, a stylish debut for the Smoke Sessions label featuring his quartet. While he had stayed active teaching and performing with others, Williams hadn't led a group for a studio album since the mid-2000s. If Audacity was a revelation, reintroducing the journeyman bassist's urbane and nuanced approach to acoustic post-bop, then his Smoke Sessions follow-up, 2023's Unalome (the Buddhist symbol for individual transcendence), is a further statement of his generous and artful skills as a bandleader. 80 years old at the time of recording, Williams is paragon of longevity, with a career that stretches back over five decades and connects him to such artists as Herbie Hancock, the Jazz Crusaders, Woody Shaw, and many others. He brings all of this deep experience to bear on his work here, together with his longtime trio featuring drummer Lenny White and pianist George Colligan, as well as vocalist Jean Baylor, saxophonist Bruce Williams, and vibraphonist Stefon Harris. While Williams had played everything from lyrical standards to avant-garde space jazz, his music here is deeply lyrical with his group largely framing Baylor with warm group arrangements. Baylor, who is best known for her work alongside husband drummer Marcus Baylor in the Grammy-nominated jazz and gospel group the Baylor Project, has a diamond-rich voice. Her work with Williams on tracks like the opening "Stairways" and their languid reading of Bruno Martino's "Estate" is intimate and blue-hued, evoking the bassist's early '60s work as a member of vocalist Nancy Wilson's band. Equally compelling is the hard-swinging "Tayashima" (a Williams composition dedicated to his daughter and originally recorded for his classic 1975 album Pinnacle) and the shimmering "The Wisdom of Silence," where Baylor's wordless vocal melody sparkles star-like against Williams' woody bass and Harris and Colligan's cascading chordal harmonies. Elsewhere, they offer a swaggering take on "42nd Street" and put their own soulful stamp on the Shirley Horn trademark tune "Here's to Life." ~ Matt Collar, Rovi
Read Less
Portions of content provided by Rovi Corporation. © 2024 Rovi Corporation.