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This collective free-jazz quartet chose their name well. The music is unflaggingly energetic and lively, but tenor-saxophonist Louie Belogenis, trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr., bassist Hill Greene, and drummer Michael Wimberly all realize that free jazz is more than just ’60s-style energy music: tempering energy with lyricism, they lace the music with references to jazz history, funk, and world music. Campbell growls like Ellingtonian Cootie Williams, erupts into long sprinting lines and funky blues inflections that would do Lee Morgan proud, and peppers his solos with free-jazz smears and abstract sounds. Belogenis’s bright, pearly tenor tone complements a weighty lyricism on the title track and some plaintive, elegiac soloing on "Walking to Loisaida." Wimberly’s hand drums inject African accents into "Afro-Eurasian Sketches," and his funk-groove-to-free-pulse trap kit propels "Exuberance." Bassist Greene lays down comfy walking-bass lines and mournful arco on "Walking to Loisaida," and his melodic concept both anchors and liberates the rhythmically free passages. Exuberance’s playfulness with traditional elements, their beautifully complex and coherent collective improvising, and their selfless spirit combine for music that’s intricate and clear, energetic but disciplined and varied, and a joy from beginning to end. BY ED HAZELL
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Issue Date: August 1 - August 7, 2003 Back to the Music table of contents |
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