Javon Jackson
Jackson plays Dylan
(Solid Jackson Records)
★★★★☆

VETERAN Missouri-born tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson, ex-member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Elvin Jones’s Jazz Machine, has created a powerful tribute to another musician of his lifetime, Bob Dylan. “He speaks up for the underserved and underrepresented,” declares Jackson.

With pianist Jeremy Manasia, bassist Isaac Levien and drummer Ryan Sands, his versions of Blowin’ in the Wind, Tombstone Blues and The Times They Are A-changing sound like commentaries on Trump’s grim distortion of America, with Jackson’s surging, melodic and emotive horn.

His passion pours out throughout his revisiting of Hurricane, Dylan’s expose of the wrongful imprisonment of the black boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, and the racism embedded in his sentencing.

Those of us who grooved to Dylan and his awakening songs the first time round in the 1960s will love this record, for this is remembrance and contemporary struggle locked together in Jackson’s superbly articulate and storytelling now-times horn.

IZE Trio
Global Prayer
(Chase Morrin Records)
★★★★☆

IZE Trio are Cypriot percussionist George Lernis, Palestinian cellist Naseem Alatrash and Los Angeles pianist Chase Morrin. In their second album, Global Prayer, they are joined by bassist John Patitucci and sopranino saxophonist Lihi Haruvi on From the Stars, and Vasilis Kostas, Yaniv Yacobi and Layth Sidiq respectively playing lauto, bazouki and violin on the track Snaefellsjokull (a glacier-capped Icelandic mountain).

Their cosmopolitan music is of the world in miniature using the words ‘EmpathIZE, HumanIZE, HarmonIZE, ImprovIZE…’ as their watchwords. There’s a worldly gentleness to their music, as in From the Stars, where Haruvi’s tender sopranino meshes beautifully with Alatrash’s scintillating cello.

“We’ve been able to add so much freedom to the music… thinking about how we exist within this crazy world now,” says Morrin. Just listen to the inventive grace and artistry of the title tune, or Taqsim or The New Order, for the latter is certainly what you will visualIZE.

Mal Waldron Trio
Stardust and Sunlight at the Jazz Showcase
(Resonance Records)
★★★★☆

WHEN New York pianist Mal Waldron (1926-2003) played at Chicago’s Jazz Showcase in August 1979, it was mainly the American Songbook that was featured in his chosen tunes, played superbly and with his customary sparse, repetitious improvising brilliance with the help of bassist Steve Rodby, drummer Wilbur Campbell and on two numbers, the febrile alto saxophonist Sonny Stitt.

This session, newly rescued and released for the first time, begins with Mal’s All Alone, written for Billie Holiday, recalling the years when Waldron was her accompanist. His notes remember her heartsong with a moving eloquence. The tolling Fire Waltz brings back his 1961 days playing with Eric Dolphy and Booker Little.

In Monk’s Round Midnight, Waldron plunges solo into the tune of his piano inspiration with chiming keys and sudden turnings like the old master. As the melody emerges with a simple beauty, you realise again what an artist was Waldron, and how we relished him.