Billy Hart - Enchance (CD)

All Music Guide

This album, which in the imaginary world of /jazz critics has been spirited off to many a desert island, represents one of the genre's supreme paradoxes. It is a music in which the way is led by certain individual figures, most of them bandleaders. Drummer Billy Hart rarely records on his own, but has been in many great bands. Somehow, in this rare outing as a bandleader for the extravagent AM Horizon series, he manages not only to make his best album, but the best album of partipants such as Oliver Lake, Don Pullen, Dewey Redman and Hannibal Marvin Peterson, all known as bandleaders in their own right. Bassist Dave Holland also is present as a player and composer, and while this album doesn't better Holland's Conference of the Birds, it is certainly on par with that masterpiece. These comments are offered not as a sniveling /jazz critic counting great moments on an abstract abacus, but as a lifelong fan and listener to the music who recognizes there are really very few of these sorts ...of special records. There are a variety of factors enhancing Enchance. Obviously, the players present are all individual stylists who bring personality, strength and spirituality to all their performances. Lake has a composition at the beginning and the end of the record, while the others including Hart come up with one tune each. This gives the program a tremendous variety, along with the use of material coming from several different sessions with overlapping but not identical instrumental line-ups. At the same time it is a remarkably consistent album that never gives the sense of jumping around from session to session or from the psyche of one creative mind to another in terms of the compositions. Hart's taste looms large over the entire project, since it has been his taste in projects as a percussionist that led him to contact with the players that are featured to begin with. He drums brilliantly throughout, including plenty of solo spots. Read more Less