George Garzone, who I remember as a kind of fire-breathing tenor player from Boston, wears his heart on his sleeve through much of Among Friends. The album's clear model is John Coltrane's 1964 Impulse recording Ballads. Among Friends is, strangely enough, the less stylistically modern of the two. This isn't meant negatively; Garzone has fashioned a smartly romantic album, one that's easy to sink deeply into for an hour or so. It's also music you'll come back to. Maybe it's not so surprising that there's a trace of pre-McCoy Tyner 'Trane here; Steve Kuhn was the pianist's predecessor in the quartet. Here he plays with great restraint, giving the bulk of his attention to tone more than technique. Kuhn is always fluent, but never flashy. Hiring Paul Motian on drums was an astute strategic move. On an album comprised mostly of ballads, Motian's resistance to being relegated to polite background embellishment toughens up the foundation of the tunes.

Garzone is willing to take on two Coltrane-recorded tunes directly. "Theme for Earnie" and "My One and Only Love" illustrate both how closely influenced the tenor player is by the Master and how effectively he has been able to move beyond… read more »