NEW RELEASES
RANDY WESTON / MELBA LISTON
“Volcano Blues”
Antilles
* * * *
The partnership of pianist-composer Weston and arranger Liston makes for a joyful reunion here. Although almost every track has a blues base, between them they inject a remarkable variety of moods, modes, meters and tempos. “Blues for Strayhorn” truly sounds like a Strayhorn work.
The only weakness is a vocal intrusion by Johnny Copeland on “Harvard Blues” --he clearly doesn’t understand what the contrived, esoteric lyrics are all about; but the four star rating is still justified.
New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).
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