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THE MAGIC HOUR
BY JON GARELICK
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Wynton has ended his 20-year relationship with Columbia, moved to revered jazz indie Blue Note (now part of the EMI group), and reduced his conception to the basics, cutting back from the septet sessions and large orchestral pieces of the past decade to a quartet. This isn’t the kind of explosive quartet jazz that Marsalis, now 42, jumped out of the gate with back in his 20s, but it’s flashy nonetheless. The opening blues vocal feature for Dianne Reeves, "Feeling of Jazz," is defeated mostly by Wynton’s lyrics, which tell you exactly how you’re supposed to feel, and Bobby McFerrin’s "Baby, I Love You" seems an attempt to re-create Fats Waller, to lesser effect. That said, Marsalis sounds great, and if he’s channeling Louis Armstrong on the McFerrin number, it’s acting at its best. As for the rest of the album, it’s determined to get the maximum of swing from the most limited means — blues, 4/4, a waltz, a touch of Latin groove. Marsalis uses everything he’s learned about dynamics and recording to show off his young band, as in the lovely, quiet sizzle drummer Ali Jackson gets when he moves from off-beat snare to an on-the-beat ride cymbal groove. And pianist Eric Lewis is a fascinating foil for the trumpeter, whether he’s setting up a Brubeck-like motoric rhythm on "Big Fat Hen" or digressing with a Baroque figuration. "You and Me" has a pretty nursery-rhyme melody that threatens to turn into "Honeysuckle Rose," "Skipping" uses stop times and alternating meters to create deathless swing, and on "Sophie Rose-Rosalie," Marsalis delivers Miles-like lyricism with the mute. The big showpiece is the 13-minute, suite-like title track, which alternates a "Flight of the Bumblebee" theme and a recurring passage of dog-whistle-range trumpet with a straight-ahead groove and a ballad section. In its quiet way, The Magic Hour is telling you who’s still boss.
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