52nd Street Themes

52nd Street Themes

Why is Joe Lovano's retrobop revival record different from all the other retrobop revival records? Because <I>52nd Street Themes</I>, which is dominated by five Tadd Dameron tunes, shakes off the musty museum reverence of such efforts and makes a very personal statement. Lovano's two most influential mentors in his native Cleveland--his father Tony and the album's arranger Willie "Face" Smith--both played with Dameron. So when Lovano plays a Dameron piece, he's not merely studying history, he's expressing the emotional debt of a son to a father, of a student to a teacher. Moreover, the saxophonist and leader has the kind of thick, creamy tone that does justice to the seductive melodies created by Dameron, Thelonious Monk, and Billy Strayhorn. And yet Lovano is a thorough modernist; no sooner does he evoke these old tunes than he pulls them apart and puts them back together again. There are seven nonet pieces (with Smith's wonderful, Mingus-like horn charts), two sextets, a quartet, a trio, a duo, and an unaccompanied sax solo. This is what Lester Young might have sounded like had he lived long enough to become David Murray. <I>--Geoffrey Himes</I>