Max Roach: Back on the Beat

A near miss by Max Roach is still a damn sight better than a direct hit by most other musicians. The opening set of his quartet's three-night stint at the Regattabar last Thursday never quite jelled, though individual moments were brilliant. Likewise, his latest release, Max Roach with the New Orchestra of Boston and the So What Brass Quintet (Blue Note), offers glimpses of Roach's melodic percussive genius and unfailing swing in an orchestral setting but doesn't add up to a satisfying whole.

Roach has kept this quartet -- with trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, tenor-saxophonist Odean Pope, and bassist Tyrone Brown -- together since the early '80s, so they know one another well enough to have a large book of tunes. But familiarity wasn't quite enough to get them through Thursday's first set. The music often lacked focus, and the band didn't come together until the final tune, Bridgewater's "Chattahoochee Red."

Of course, with musicians of this caliber, there was still plenty to listen to. Roach and bassist Brown provide a combination of power and flexibility that glues things together. During Bridgewater's solo on the opening "Mwalimu," they broke up and scattered the beat, providing contrast and a bit of tension to offset the trumpeter's calm, focused phrasing. They bore down during Pope's roiling solo on "Chattahoochee Red," with Roach's ride cymbal and snare-drum bombs goading the saxophonist and Brown's gliding lines greasing the wheels. Brown, also a riveting soloist, gets a rich, cello-like tone on the upright electric bass; his fleet, lyrical solo on "Chattahoochee" earned the set's biggest applause. Roach remains the great melodicist and orchestrator of the trap set, as he demonstrated with his unaccompanied solo in tribute to the late Alan Dawson, whom he credited as an inspiration for his all-percussion ensemble, M'Boom.

Roach and Brown support two horns who couldn't be more different from one another. Bridgewater is frequently (and unfairly) compared to Roach's most famous trumpeter partner, Clifford Brown. But Bridgewater's tone is darker and full of greater ambiguities than the sweet-souled Brown's; his solos follow their own muse. One of the least flashy trumpeters you'll ever hear, Bridgewater never forces a solo. On "Tears for Johannesburg," he built strings of short melodic phrases into a solid edifice that nevertheless offered surprising spaces and attractive embellishments.

Pope, on the other hand, crowds his solos with notes. Using circular breathing on "Chattahoochee," he played alarmingly long lines that bristled with sharp angles and spikes of huge interval leaps. He underlined them with anguished shrieks and blistering blues riffs, producing a solo of pendulum swings between Heaven and Hell. On an unaccompanied "I Remember Clifford" (also in honor of Dawson), Pope softened his steel-wool tone with a warm vibrato; and with his false-register high notes, which are as firm and clear as his low notes, he built towering phrases slowly till they scraped the clouds.

On his new CD, Roach is the featured soloist on "Festival Journey," an orchestral work written by UMass-Amherst composer Fred Tillis and conducted by MIT professor David Epstein. Despite its colorful orchestration, especially for the brass, several attractive themes in the vein of Aaron Copland and George Gershwin, and variations on familiar folk themes (also à la Copland), the 50-minute piece doesn't sustain interest for its full length. Although the music is highly rhythmic, the orchestra isn't asked to swing like a jazz band; the contrasts with Roach's playing are its great strength. The album's other track, "Ghost Dance," performed by Roach and a jazz brass quintet, features more focused writing and marvelous solos from Bridgewater and trombonist Steve Turre; it's good enough to have earned a whole album by the group in the near future.

-- Ed Hazell