Trumpeter
Roy Campbell
has flown under the radar for quite a while as one of the truly underrated brass players in modern mainstream and creative improvised jazz. What will loft his rising further is in the hands of listeners and poll voters, but what makes him unique is the ability to carve his personal identity into each project, live it, embrace it, and make it a unified whole different from his previous efforts. This CD documents the world premiere of his
Akhenaten Suite
, presented at the 12th annual
Vision Festival
in New York City. It's a seven-part magnum opus, with bookended stand-alone pieces on either side of the four-segment
"Pharaoh's Revenge."
All throughout this live concert, violinist
Billy Bang
plays tandem melody lines with
Campbell
, rarely stepping outside that partnership. It's a fickle sonance that deserves close attention, very much in tune with each other's fragile but wondrous timbres. They also take quite a few liberties with extended solos, while vibraphonist
Bryan Carrott
adopts a subsidiary harmonic role. The Afrocentric spirit waltz
"Akhenaten"
starts the set with
's splattery overblown harmonic horn bearing down over
Bang
's searching violin and the steady, churning drumming of
Zen Matsuura
. The closer,
"Sunset of the Nile,"
is a perfectly titled and rendered closer, very similar to
John Coltrane
's work in the mid-'60s that straddles the line between
Freddie Hubbard
's
"Little Sunflower"
and
Harold Land
's epic
"Pakistan"
from his landmark LP
Damisi
, sporting a samba-driven bassline from
Hilliard Greene
. The suite proper, dedicated to the Pharaohs of Egypt circa 1350 B.C., starts with a free recorder and
Sun Ra
-type percussive statement across
's sighing violin, followed by a 4/4 modal desert caravan trek that is straightforward and not complex, and then another free episode sounding like birds of the Nile, with
Greene
's bowed bass and
on the argol/arghul. The hard-charging finale expresses the wrath and ultimate vengeful exultation of the urgent, beautiful, and dutiful Pharaoh. The sound quality of this performance is a bit thin and sparse, but more volume cures this slight criticism. The jazz world is all too aware that
has a definitive statement within him, and though more interplay and development of themes are needed here, there is an overall good end result on this ambitious first outing of what could eventually wind up being his signature large composition. ~ Michael G. Nastos