What an absolute treasure this album is! If Martin Wind’s Stars is not on my jazz top 10 for 2026 I’ll eat my hat. With my favorite clarinetist Anat Cohen on the front line and the legendary pianist Kenny Barron on board, a project is guaranteed to appeal to me (and plenty of others). Add in the rhythm section of the leader, German born and New York based Martin Wind on bass, and Matt Wilson, one of the most in demand drummers in New York, and what’s not to love?
This superb quartet has some great material to work with, too; heavy on the music of Duke Ellington and associated composers and musicians, which is always a good strategy. It opens with the deeply swinging bluesy “Passing Thoughts,” penned by Aaron Bell, one of the Duke’s bassists, with lovely melodic soles from both Cohen and Barron. A little farther along comes Duke’s playful but yearning “Black Butterfly,” which gives Wind one of many opportunities at a jaunty solo. He introduces Duke’s “The Feeling Of Jazz” with a lengthy ostinato solo, but the real star on this one is Barron at the keys.
Wind flexes his composing muscles on three tracks, all three of them ballads that bring out the most sensitive playing of Cohen and Barron. And the program is rounded out with some more choice covers including “Wail” by the bebop pioneer pianist Bud Powell: check out the smart unison sections on clarinet, piano and bass! Cohen is deeply immersed in Brazilian music, so a wise choice was Edu Lobo’s bossa nova standard “Pra Dizer Adeus” (To Say Goodbye). And what better way to wrap this melodic treat of an album than the romantic standard “Stars Fell On Alabama”?
The digital version has two bonus tracks, the delightful “Blues With Two Naturals” by Wind, Wilson and Barron, and Wind’s wistful “Marc’s Moments.” Don’t overlook the curious but stunning cover art by the enigmatic Icelander Ragnar Kjartansson. A great project all around to inaugurate the label’s 10th anniversary.
This is an album I didn’t know I needed until I heard it. Alto saxophonnist Dave Pietro shines on The Butterfly Effect with a solid lineup and an engaging program of nine melodic modern jazz tracks. Pieetro’s aveteran of various ensembles including the Grammy winning Maria Schneider Orchestra, and this is his 12th recording in a leading role, his second for SteepleChase.
Pianist Gary Versace has been a common thread in many of Pietro’s albums, and the two have a clear affinity here. Trumpeter Scott Wendholt also shines on solos and especially in duet with Pietro. Jay Anderson and Adam Cruz round out the ensemble on bass and drums.
This album oozes sophistication, and yet it’s supremely accessible. Six of the nine tracks are originals by Pietro, ranging from the beautifully exploratory opener “Svengali” to the warmly tuneful title track, the engaging ballad “Idle Tears” to the jaunty blues “Mr. Breitenfeld.” The covers are well chosen. The Bacharach-David pop standard “Promises Promises” is a perfect vehicle for interplay between trumpet and sax; Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man In Paris” shows off Pietro’s command of high level interplay between rhythm and melody; and Stevie Wonder’s “Taboo To Love” is played as wonderfully lush soul jazz with great restraint by the rhythm section. Everything here — composition, arrangement, scripted interplay and improvisation — is elegant without pretention.
These days I’m all about the trumpet, so I’m totally delighted by this classic reissue from SteepleChase. John McNeil and Tom Harrell are legendary horn players who rose to prominence in the New York scene of the 1970s, and this recording is the only one they made together. Not only that but their rhythm players here are also legends in their own rights, who also began their careers in the same time and place: pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Billy Hart. All of them are still with us well into their 70s and 80s, except for McNeil who sadly died in 2024.
Look To The Sky was originally released in 1979, and reissued on CD in 1996 with bonus material. SteepleChase has now reissued it, remastered, on heavyweight modern vinyl. I don’t know what its reception was like on original release, but it’s obviously a classic of the era and one that helped move jazz from the ’70s in to the ’80s and beyond.
The six tracks on the album include choice covers from the bebop and hard bop eras and a couple of Harrell originals that look back and forward in interesting ways. It leads off with Charlie Parker’s “Chasing The Bird,” a suitably uptempo bop that features lots of interplay between the two horns — a sort of staking out of territories, if this was that kind of record, but throughout it’s definitely a collaboration rather than a competition. The Johnny Mercer standard “Namely You” is romantic and sunny, with an insouciant solo from Barron and lots of swing from the locked-in rhythm section. Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Look To The Sky” was fairly new at the time, having been the title track of Jobim’s 1975 Creed Taylor produced album. I have to say Barron really shines on this track too, and McNeil and Harrell both play lovely flugelhorn solos.
Harrell’s composition “Terrestris” has a Latin groove of its own and provides some impressive unison trumpet duetting up front. His “Little Dancer” is another track with mellow flugelhorns that has a smooth, mellow vibe. They might have saved the best for last, a subtly scorching take on Sam Jones’s “Unit 7,” most well known as a Cannonball Adderley instrumental track from his album with Nancy Wilson. Williams and Hart really swing on this one but also set the peppy tempo that draws hot performances from the rest of the ensemble.
Don’t let the somewhat prosaic cover on this one fool you. Look To The Sky is everything a jazz reissue should be, reminding us of the valuable contributions of today’s masters back when they were young and hungry. Highly recommended.
(Newvelle Records, 2026)
(SteepleChase, 2026)
(SteepleChase, 1979/2026)
