Still exploring his sound with a strong quintet, trumpeter
Liam Sillery is a long way off from his days with the California sound of
the Acoustic Jazz Quartet. On
Priorité,
Sillery combines with his stalwart troupe for a solid session of post-bop, no modifications needed. While
Sillery himself tends to take the lead solo in most places, flights of fancy that can show both speed and power, there's ample time given to the rest of the ensemble -- bouncing basslines from
Thomas Morgan, call and response between
Vinnie Sperrazza's drums and the rest of the group, brief explorations on piano from
Jesse Stacken. The more common technique here, however, is the combination of trumpet and Matt Blostein's sax.
Sillery and Blostein spend plenty of time working on parallel lines of melody, switching briefly to call-and-response patterns in solos, switching back to an accompanying role on longer melodic sections. The interplay between the horns helps to set off the sounds from one another, but does much more to cement the ensemble's sound into a solid unit, and to provide a trail through the set that ties the varying songs together, making a coherent whole for the listener. ~ Adam Greenberg