2008-12-15
On November 17th , the James Moody & Hank Jones Quartet on the IPO label released “Our Delight”, a collection of jazz favorites/standards by two legendary names on the Jazz scene. With “Our Delight” the theme was to pay tribute to the music of Dizzy Gillespie (tracks 2, 3 & 10) and Tadd Dameron (tracks 1,4, 7 &9). The album starts off with (1) Our Delight (T.Dameron), the title cut, a classic with Moody’s soaring tenor sax and Jones’ complimentary accompaniment on piano; the solos were delightful and free. That’s the one thing I love about jazz is how “free” you are to express your musical ideas at a split second. I love the way the quartet took this classic and executed it to its fullness while leaving you wanting for more. The next offering was “Birk’s Works (Gillespie) a smooth classy jazz tune, with Moody’s laid back sax intro really sets up this tune nicely, while listening to this track, I could imagine the great Dizzy hitting the notes with his trumpet, and The Quartet represented this song very well. My favorite on the album is track 4“Lady Bird” (Dameron) a smooth offering of a classic that doesn’t disappoint, it’s a very soothing track that could relax even the most stressed out mind. As I listened to the whole album one thing came clear to me, that this is how a classic jazz album could keep with tradition and yet bridge the gap between young and old jazz enthusiasts. “Our Delight” was a “delightful” fun album that I truly enjoyed from the first note to the last.-Corey JonesJAKE BERGEVIN
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