This is surprisingly a good disc, in the early career of Marsalis, i followed him somewhat, but then he made a slew of poor albums, and i went off him, but just lately he's made some sort of 'comeback', he now tends to play serious Quartet music, with fresh new ideas, him and Wynton seem to have swapped places, now Wynton's becoming a crossover light musician, one of the things that sets this album apart, is the length of the tracks, anywhere from 6 to 14 minutes, just the length alone shows how serious these guys get into their music, plus there's only 7 tracks, but with 74 minutes of music, then there's the case of the track names, 'Blakzilla' or 'Sir Roderick, The Aloof ', now them's some creative names for sure, but this album takes work to really sift out the treasures it definitely holds.
Branford Marsalis is American, he's now 52, he recorded this album in 2006, i don't know what the baseball theme in the pictures has to do with the music, but the photography is great [by Arnold Levine], the back inlay card is even better, nicely laid out.
The tracks i liked the best were 3 & 5, Marsalis seems to reserve the more slower lyrical tracks for the soprano saxophone, and in some ways this is where he's a real master, the highlight of the album is track 5 'O Solitude', it's actually a Henry Purcell song,.
Here's Branford Marsalis playing 'O Solitude' on YouTube.
Here's Branford Marsalis playing 'O Solitude' on YouTube.
