eMusic Review 0
This is Joshua Redman’s “ballads with strings” record, a venerable tradition that most includes such torrid beboppers as Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown. It continues Redman’s recent penchant for putting himself in new settings — his membership in the egalitarian ensemble James Farm and the knotty skronk he’s delivered guesting with The Bad Plus are other examples — but on Walking Shadows he allows himself the security blanket of deploying sidemen. It isn’t easy to come up with three more acutely creative jazz balladeers than the other members of his core quartet — pianist (and album producer) Brad Mehldau, drummer Brian Blade and bassist Larry Grenadier. Their low-key sensitivity is a secret ingredient here.
The material is a diverse but simpatico mix of American songbook standards, pop hits and group originals. Redman plays with gorgeous aplomb on Kern and Hammerstein’s “The Folks Who Live on the Hill” and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” (the latter also features Mehldau’s best solo). He teases out the familiar melodies of The Beatles’ “Let It Be” and “Stop That Train” by John Mayer before taking transformative liberties with them via deft improvisations. The most arresting of the originals is Redman’s atmospheric “Final Hour,” in which his tenor… read more »
