JD Allen Trio - Shine! (2009)

Tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen seems like a man out of time. His sensibility is right out of the heyday of '50s and '60s bop. His confident, intense style, and his trio with bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston will - and - should inspire comparisons to Sonny Rollins' groups. Yet despite all this, Allen's approach feels thoroughly modern and fresh. Why? Well, because no one else is doing this today. Above all else, Allen economizes. The songs on Shine!, his trio's second album for Sunnyside, run two to five minutes. Every bar is precious; every note counts.

The 36-year-old plays with the adventure-some spirit of a free-jazzer but the melodic and rhythmic grounding of a bebopper. On tunes like the openers "Esre!" and "Sonhouse," vigorous workouts that segue into each other, the trio's elastic nature evinces itself. Tunes are built on simple melodic underpinnings, but the music is anything but simple. For one thing, no one keeps the time - August and Royston are improvising as much as Allen. In fact, the drummer may be improvising most of all, because we rarely hear the actual rhythm; instead, we feel it below the surface, as each member of the trio surely does. They do this to varying degrees; Royston's drums swing gently , while August patiently builds a bass solo. The rhythm of "Teo," on the other hand, is completely untethered, while more traditional patterns reemerge on "Variation," the two-minute slice of bebop that closes the disc. -- Steve Greenlee