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Chris Biscoe Quartet

Gone in the Air: The Music of Eric Dolphy

Trio Records TR578

The music of Eric Dolphy struck alto player/clarinettist Chris Biscoe, on first acquaintance with it, as the playing of 'someone who had gone one step too far', but he slowly assimilated it, realising that 'blues and pre-bop jazz were an essential part of the mix with natural sounds, classical music, and post-bop jazz'.

On this album, which concentrates on Dolphy compositions such as 'Serene' (from Out There), a couple of pieces from Dolphy's debut, Outward Bound ('Les' and '245') and 'Out to Lunch' plus the most celebrated Dolphy-associated compositions, Fats Waller's 'Jitterbug Waltz' and Oliver Nelson's 'Stolen Moments', Biscoe aims to play as if he's 'absorbed the ideas of Dolphy' rather than reproducing them, and the result, an exhilarating, heady rush of music, triumphantly vindicates his approach.

There are few sounds in the music as distinctive and joyously vibrant as a Dolphy-led band in full flight, and Biscoe's quartet ­ completed by fellow alto player Tony Kofi, bassist Larry Bartley and drummer Stu Butterfield ­ recapture the fiercely life-affirming quality of the great man's manner perfectly, Biscoe all daring intervallic leaps and wailing urgency, the intelligently complementary Kofi his astringent but powerful self, Bartley lithe and propulsive, Butterfield briskly, bouncily percussive in the best 1960s manner but none the less himself throughout.

By turns bluesy, free-jazz-tinged, and bop-influenced, Dolphy's music is deservedly celebrated today as wholly distinctive and genuinely original, but is perhaps not heard enough, and this album, by placing it firmly back in the spotlight, is thus as valuable as it is compellingly listenable. Strongly recommended.

Release date 23 June 2008