James Carter

Lots of young horn players can play like their heroes, but not many can play with them.
Twenty-seven-year-old James Carter, the most commanding saxophonist to emerge in jazz
since David Murray, does just that on his fourth album, engaging in a series of
cross-generational dialogues with jazz statesmen including veteran Count Basie sidemen
Harry "Sweets" Edison and Buddy Tate, and avant-garde leaders Hamiet Bluiett a... More >

Say his Wynton Marsalis side provides technique, ambition, maybe focus. Plus, OK, respect for his elders--for sure he's not mocking or upstaging Buddy Tate and Sweets Edison. But it's his Lester Bowie side that inclines him to adore their melodiousness, and their melodies. It's his Bowie side that covers a march by elder Anthony Braxton, consorts with Coltrane via elder Hamiet Bluiett, revs his own waltz into a flag-waver and reduces it to a cartoon. It's his Bowie side that covers the Lester Bowie reggae, defining the grooveful, comic, demotic tone of everything that follows. A jazz album, absolutely. But one any rock and roller who can abide a saxophone could love. (Grade: A)