Ralph Alessi - Baida (2013) [Hi-Res]

There are magic moments when an artist can be said to have well and truly “arrived.” For Ralph Alessi, the release of Baida – his ECM debut as a bandleader – is just such a moment, despite his already extensive resume. Among those in the know, Alessi is renowned as a musician’s musician, a first-call New York trumpeter who can play virtually anything on sight and has excelled as an improviser in groups led by Steve Coleman, Uri Caine, Ravi Coltrane, Fred Hersch and Don Byron, as well as leading his own bands. But Alessi has created something breathtaking with Baida, an album sure to beguile a wider audience with its atmospheric depth and melodic allure. To voice his suite of compositions, the trumpeter has convened a powerhouse New York band with pianist Jason Moran, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits. As a vessel for the album’s seemingly bottomless lyricism, this quartet of virtuosos plays with extraordinary finesse; but there is also a tensile strength emanating from the performances, a muscularity that one can feel. Then there is the silver of Alessi’s trumpet tone; as The New York Times has said, it has “a rounded luminescence, like the moon in full phase.”

'New York trumpeter Ralph Alessi has long been a fixture on the jazz scene, thanks to his inventive work with employers such as Steve Coleman, Ravi Coltrane and Uri Caine. But his ECM debut as bandleader, with the superb trio of Jason Moran (piano), Drew Gress (bass) and Nasheet Waits (drums) shows how much more there is to him without disrupting his particular eloquent calm. On these 10 pieces he sounds quietly wired and fascinated by what his partners are firing at him, while not remotely detached from his signature virtues of tonal purity and unflustered invention. All the pieces are his, from the initially free-fluttering title track with its soft trumpet doodles over slow-moving piano and percussion, through the delicately prancing Chuck Barris, to the weaving Throwing Like a Girl with its shivery snare-drum tattoo and prodding piano lines. Moran is as attuned to his surroundings as ever, Gress and Waits keep the pressure up but not the volume, and occasionally the whole set sounds eerily like the mid-60s Miles Davis quintet reinvented as a shyly slinky, contemporary-cool-jazz tribute.' (John Fordham, The Guardian)

Ralph Alessi, trumpet
Jason Moran, piano
Drew Gress, double bass
Nasheet Waits, drums