Yellowjackets: Cohearance

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

William Kennedy (d, syn)
Russell Ferrante (p, ky)
Dane Alderson (b)
Bob Mintzer (s)

Label:

Mack Avenue MACK

June/2016

Catalogue Number:

1108

RecordDate:

date not stated

The title may be groan-worthy but the ethos, as ever with the Yellowjackets, is worth celebrating. This is an album, as the cover tells you, about unity, harmony and symmetry. After the decades that three of them have been together you’d expect such unity in their shared song making; that old jazz chestnut about telepathy is unnecessary as the quartet swing sweetly together, most notably on the classically nuanced title track or on the bop-tinged ‘Child’s Play’. The latter has Mintzer in joyous mode, and with Jimmy Haslip now long gone, the Mintzer/Ferrante axis propels the Jackets further into a straightahead jazz niche, light years from the band’s more rocking days with Robben Ford. Alderson’s recent arrival, replacing Felix Pastorius, only further cements the frontmen’s prominence. He too swings at heart, and there’s a buoyancy rather than flamboyance to his playing (though he lands a nifty break on ‘Anticipation’) that gives Mintzer an even further lift than, say, on 2013’s A Rise In The Road.

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