It was hard to hear much of the music on this CD owing to the much louder noise of Benny Goodman spinning in his grave. Oran Etkin is an accomplished reed-player, but trading his often ordinary material on the reputation of one of history's most supremely gifted clarinettists looks like trying to sell the unsaleable by underhand means. Nobody with a love and affection for Goodman's music will be drawn to this lumpy collection, which when it does occasionally turn towards a Goodman direction suffers from that trait of so many contemporary musicians, which is to offer pastiche of swing clichés instead of making any effort to understand how the original music works. Part of the fault is the heavy-handed, unsympathetic drumming of Matt Wilson, which too often drags pianist Fortner's attempts to bring light and shade into the music into a slurry pit of bangs and crashes. ‘King Porter Stomp’ is an example, where the impression is of the group collectively thumbing their noses at what they perceive as the corny music of the past.

I could attempt to describe more of the individual tracks, but it's just all too depressing. Apart from a sympathetic slow version of ‘What's New?’ displaying a delightfully translucent clarinet tone, the only relief is the singing of Charenee Wade, whose attempt to bring energy and swing to ‘Why Don't You Do Right?’ is backed by a kaleidoscope of fragmented broken sounds, but even these do not dim her inherent energy and ability to put over the lyric, which she does effectively by mainly ignoring her hostile environment.