Benny Golson - New Times, New ’Tet

Octogenarian jazz legend still going strong and burning brightly

Evidently retirement is not for Benny Golson, who celebrated his 80th birthday in January this year. With a new album to promote and an autobiography in the pipeline – not forgetting a busy tour schedule that will eat up most of 2009 – the Philly-born tenor sax maestro and composer has got, by anyone’s standards, a hectic year in front of him. But while Golson himself, given his workload, is understandably thinking ahead, it’s difficult for jazz aficionados not to look back and survey his past achievements. He is, after all, one of the last survivors of the bebop age and, as well as playing with Dizzy Gillespie and, most famously, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Golson also penned some of modern jazz’s most enduring tunes, such as I Remember Clifford, Stablemates and Killer Joe.

This new album finds Golson revisiting the sextet format that served him so well in the late 50s and early 60s when he co-led the Jazztet with Art Farmer. On this session, Golson’s musical cohorts include trumpeter Eddie Henderson and virtuoso trombonist Steve Davis, who make telling contributions to a rewarding set that not only offers new compositions, but revisits old ones (including Whisper Not, featuring Al Jarreau), and occasionally combines jazz with classical music to striking effect, as on L’Adieu and Verdi’s Voice.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

Concord | 7231121

Reviewed by Charles Waring
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