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Wave Street Sessions / Greg Abate
/ Wave Street Studios ‘live in Monterey’ / WSS0003
CD /
a review by Peter DeVeber
A great player. What? In the
top 3 – the top 6 – 7? It doesn’t matter. You show
up you’re in for a treat. Jazz alto bebop saxophone
specialist Greg Abate! Wave Street Sessions ‘Live’
in Monterey!
2010!
Now, the Oh You Crazy Moon
track. Is it better than Chet Baker’s version?
It’s different, of course, but as good believe me
when I tell you. There are two great things in jazz
– the alto saxophone and trumpet player/vocalist
Chet Baker. Wait! Three. Greg Abate.
Wave Street and Abate are
inventions and squeeze plays, inventors and
shortstops; quietly sit and sip to the time of a
drumstick on a dead cymbal, piano spacing and a hell
of a vibe of a bass and by George we’re playing
jazz! - and Abate’s alto saxophone scatters the
drapes and moves the chalk for sidewalk composers
east and west.
Technically this album is very
adequate – jazzily and gutsily it is beyond any
reasonable expectation, to use a cliché; it is
outstanding, to use another. But let me assure you,
Wave Street is no cliché. Just hear the testimony
of Oh You Crazy Moon.
Of Abate, Coltrane might have
said, “We all wish we could sound like that,” and
DeVeber might add, “Even those of us who don’t play
the saxophone.” Wave Street: highly recommended.
10 tracks each worth a 10.
Bill Cunliffe, piano; Ray
Drummond, bass and Akira Tana, drums: they’re right
there! need say no more!
Abate’s For the Love of Life is
Standard Power as is his playing on it. My short
list for National Anthems of Jazz: How High the
Moon, Stella by Starlight, and I Cover the
Waterfront – now let’s do jazz a favor and add For
the Love of Life for Pete’s sake. <>
Buy CD
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