This
Futura
CD issue of vanguard trumpet legend
Ted Curson
with the
Georges Arvanitas Trio
in a Paris studio is one of those very special dates where everything seems to go right.
Curson
is in excellent form here, whether he is playing
free improvisation
as on
"Latin Quarter,"
which opens the set and is a fiery 13-minute excursion into the outer reaches of
free jazz
, or turning in a slightly bent but nonetheless streaming
hard bop
performance as he odes on the next track,
"Flip Top."
The
Arvanitas Trio
, an under-celebrated band that backed virtually every major American musician in Paris proves how well it adapts to
's muscular style by responding with more muscle.
Arvanitas
' left-hand rhythm comping is tough and full of fire and edges. On
"L.S.D. Takes a Holiday,"
pushes
hard to the edges of a harmonic shelf that finally bleeds off into a blazing symmetry of angles that is propelled into an abyss by the ferocious bass playing of the under-heralded
Jacky Sampson
. Also noteworthy are
's compositions here that, like much music of their time, leave tradition to the dust. He engages it and the
blues
in a sort of modal inquiry, where he wraps extant ideas about form, tonal sonance, and intervallic architecture in a phraseology and compositional elegance that was beyond most of his peers.
's CD version sounds warm, lovely, and very much alive. Thank goodness this is available again. ~ Thom Jurek