Phil Collins: A Hot Night in Paris (WEA)
Despite the leader's unsubtle drumming, this is an excellent big band, crisp, tight, with good intonation, several competent soloists and a couple, Harry Kim (trumpet/flugelhorn) and Larry Panella (tenor), who are rather more than that. It's also superbly recorded live on tour last year. And the arrangers, notably John Clayton Jnr, Sammy Nestico and Mike Barone, have a deservedly respected jazz pedigree. But their work - and that of other arrangers - here sacrifices substance on the altar of flash posturing and playing to the gallery. Presumably Collins, who wrote most of the compositions used, is responsible; as leader, he calls the shots. The result, too often, is like one long, heavy-breathing climax - jazz as Viagra music.
By Ray Comiskey
Lew Soloff: With a Song in My Heart (Milestone)
Trumpeter Lew Soloff has played with everyone from Blood, Sweat & Tears to Gil Evans, Machito, Dave Liebman and Elvin Jones, but on this splendid new album his true metier seems as a bopper playing standards or originals with enough harmonic meat for him to chew on. With a marvellous rhythm section in Mulgrew Miller (piano), George Mraz (bass) and Victor Lewis (drums) to complement him over two laid-back sessions last year, he responds with a virtuoso display of melodically savoury improvising. Harmon-muted and tonally reminiscent of Miles Davis, Soloff nevertheless uses space differently, spinning out long, thrusting lines with their own attractive logic. No surprises, then - just inform, quality players, material to match and warmly accessible music.
By Ray Comiskey