Drummer Winard Harper, a still young veteran, has led many groups over the years since starting out with Dexter Gordon, Betty Carter and Billy Taylor and this is probably the nearest thing we have currently in the tradition of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Previous line-ups have helped launch the careers of contemporary stalwarts like JD Allen, Justin Robinson, Eric Revis, Stephen Scott and Kevin Hayes. After a series of CDs for Joe Fields' Savant label, he's now turned up on John Lee's JLP with a new band – and three horns instead of two – with up-and-coming hard boppers Bruce Harris (replacing Patrick Rickman), a fine young very Coltrane-influenced tenor player Javon Alexandre (for Brian Horton) and an exciting trombonist-composer-arranger we've enthused about previously, with a much harder, quite fruity conception than people like smooth-toned Steve Davis. The material includes covers of Sonny Clark's ‘Somethin’ Special' and George Cables' ‘Helen’s Song' plus a mix of adequate originals by Harper himself and Dease, a couple of standard ballads (featuring excellent flute by ageless guest Frank Weiss) and a short ultra-gospelly ‘Amazing Grace’, arranged by Dease and spotlighting guest pianist Tadataka Urno. All the ‘new boys’ show promise and are fortunate to have Harper to take them to the next level.