Best of 2016 #9: Ian Carey Quintet + 1 – “Interview Music” (Kabocha Records)

It’s notable how impressively trumpeter Ian Carey is able to keep Interview Music sounding unbound and free even within a meticulous framework of compositions, and how the ensemble doesn’t leave its fingerprints on the transitions between planned and improvisational sections.  But what really elevates this session to something special is how much fun they have playing with a straight-ahead sound.  It’s the suddenness of wind instruments exploding with the grace and speed of a murmuration of starlings, and how bass & drums attempt to break the sound barrier while trumpet patiently sighs out a melody, and how a sing-song melody snaps into place with harmony that is all about contemplation, and how the wind instruments take angles and bend curvatures that brush up against the expected change in direction without actually taking it.  It’s all of these unexpected traits, accents and differentiations, that has the cumulative effect of transforming the album’s entire world.

Jazz from Oakland, CA.

Read more about the album at Bird is the Worm (LINK).