Jerome Sabbagh: Vintage

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Johnathan Blake
Kenny Barron
Joe Martin
Jerome Sabbagh (ts)

Label:

Sunnyside

October/2023

Media Format:

CD, DL

Catalogue Number:

SSC1701

RecordDate:

Rec. 5 November 2020

Jerome Sabbagh is a fluent saxophonist with an airy tone and a breezy cool-school aesthetic. Born in Paris in 1973, he moved to New York aged 22 and released his first album, North, on the Fresh Sounds label in 2004. Since then, he has bubbled under the Big Apple surface and appeared on over a dozen more.

Those releases, a mix of own-name and sideman dates, mostly featured original material – his short 2011 stint with drummer Paul Motian indicates his forward-thinking bent. In contrast, Vintage brings out Sabbagh’s primary saxophone influence, Stan Getz, though it is Kenny Barron, Getz’s late-life pianist, who most defines the album’s shape. Add Johnathan Blake in the drummer’s chair and the experienced Joe Martin on bass, and the dream-team rhythm section is complete.

The set opens with the bouncy swing and flowing changes of ‘Vintage’, a Sabbagh original custom-built for this quartet. Tadd Dameron’s ‘On a Misty Night’ follows, a light-touch reprise of the version made famous by John Coltrane. An original samba and a Sabbagh mood-piece are also broadly Getzian in style.

The album is completed by three piano/sax duets. Billy Strayhorn’s ‘A Flower is a Lovesome Thing’ comes mid-set and the album closes with a brace of Thelonious Monk. Here, Barron’s immaculate voicings and delicate asides enable Sabbagh’s lyricism to fly; but it is Barron’s unaccompanied solos that reach for the stars.

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