Picking up on
Herbie Hancock
's
"New Standards"
idea, borrowing some old
standards
, and splitting the total down the middle,
Joshua Redman
lends his warm fatback tone, arching skyward passages and a
post-bop
quartet concept to ten popular songs of the 20th century.
Richard Rodgers
,
Cole Porter
Jerome Kern
Irving Berlin
, and the
Gershwins
share space with
the Beatles
Joni Mitchell
Bob Dylan
Stevie Wonder
and
Prince
-- distinguished songwriters all, yet the scorecard tells us that the oldsters' tunes consistently receive more interesting treatment than the
rock
/
folk
songs.
"Yesterdays"
is flexible enough to turn almost into an acoustic
funk
thing;
"How Deep Is the Ocean"
saunters along very soulfully; the near
cha cha
rhythm on
"Love for Sale"
pulls some inspired heat from
Redman
. On the other side of the divide,
"The Times They Are A-Changin'"
isn't very interesting, where even tricky rhythm changes and an
Eddie Harris
-like high note coda can't pump up an earthbound performance.
"Eleanor Rigby"
fragments under a
jazz
waltz
treatment presumably planned with
Coltrane
"My Favorite Things"
in mind (
's soprano sounds desperately out of gas at the close). Oddly enough, a broadly funky
Harris
approach pays off on
"How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore,"
the sole exception to the pattern. This is not to say that the
material is intrinsically inferior to the
Tin Pan Alley
-- no way. They simply do not translate very well into the language of the young neo-boppers, or at least, these neo-boppers on this given day.
Brad Mehldau
(piano),
Larry Grenadier
(bass) and
Brian Blade
(drums) make up the technically faultless, flexible piano trio, and most of the selections are separated by short, untitled interludes that usually grow more or less out of the preceding pieces. ~ Richard S. Ginell