Bitches and Fairy Tales Challenge ****

Led by the exceptional Dutch trumpeter and composer Eric Vloeimans, this late 1990s quartet session was a date that turned out well despite the odds – a repertoire of the leader’s originals and a day’s studio time with a non-working group. It helped that the others were John Taylor (piano), Marc Johnson (bass) and Joey Baron (drums), and that Johnson and Baron were frequent colleagues. They got inside the music to such a degree that there was nothing tentative about the results; more time might have raised the bar even higher. Taylor fits into the rhythm section like a glove and handles Vloeimans’s intelligent, often quirky writing with insight and aplomb, while the young trumpeter is sheer poise, authority and invention. If anything, however, the passing of time has made Baron’s contribution to knitting the interactive strands together seem even more crucial. See challengerecords.com