Now Is Another Time [Audio CD] David Murry Latin Big Band

There's excitement around big bands again, with stellar releases by Andrew Hill and Dave Holland. Here David Murray takes the big band in a different direction, toward the explosive music of Cuba. His first big band outing since 1995, this is a brawling, passionate encounter with the Havana musical community and Cuban rhythms. Accompanied by a handful of U.S. associates--trumpeter Hugh Ragin, trombonist Craig Harris, baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett--Murray has immersed himself in the new experience, crafting compositions that are true to his own jazz traditions and the music of the island. The result is a churning, bubbling cauldron of sound. Murray's arrangements build on the energy, using the horn sections to pump out riffs and figures against the polyrhythmic frenzy of the colliding drums, the joyous tumult a springboard to inspired solos. Murray himself often surmounts it all, and is simply one of the most exciting improvisers in jazz, his every note spun with a different inflection, from smear to squawk to convulsive run. There are also inspired contributions from a bevy of Cuban musicians, including altoist German Velasco Urdeliz and trumpeter Alexander Brown Cabrera. While Cuban-U.S. musical encounters grow more numerous, this is a highpoint, harkening back to the incendiary encounters once presided over by Dizzy Gillespie. --Stuart Broomer