Malachi Thompson - Rising Daystar (1999)

When Malachi Thompson calls his music "free bop," it isn't empty rhetoric; he really does take a free, open-minded approach to bop, and he savors "the tradition" without being enslaved by it. Recorded at three separate sessions in 1997, 1998, and 1999, Rising Daystar is primarily a hard bop/post-bop CD -- Malachi originals like "Mansa," "Song for Morgan" (an ode to Lee Morgan, one of the trumpeter's main influences) and the title song would have fit in easily on an album by Jazz Messengers, Lee Morgan, or Freddie Hubbard in the early 1960s. But while Rising Daystar is more inside than outside and often underscores Thompson's appreciation of Morgan and Hubbard's classic Blue Note output, the Chicagoan isn't limited to that approach. Thompson also has AACM credentials, and on "Fanfare for Trane" (Trane as in John Coltrane) and "Circles in the Air," he detours into the avant garde and savors the pleasures of dissonant outside improvisation. Thompson doesn't play trumpet at all on "Circles in the Air"; joined by drummer Dana Hall and the late bassist Fred Hopkins (1948-1999), he gets into some very eccentric, stream-of-consciousness scat singing and spoken word. Alto and soprano saxman Gary Bartz and tenor saxman Sonny Seals are among Thompson's other noteworthy guests on this appealing CD.