The Revellers

Kirk MacDonald's move from Toronto to Ottawa a few years back took the tenor saxophonist off one of the front lines of the Canadian jazz scene. If his profile has suffered as a result, his playing certainly has not - not according to this exemplary debut CD made in March, 1990, with the Toronto musicians Sam Noto (trumpet), Mark Eisenman (piano), Steve Wallace (bass) and Jerry Fuller (drums).

MacDonald has made a fine, slippery style out of his considerable technical facility and improvisational stamina: his solos are characteristically smooth, middle distance dashes that take unlikely twists and turns with unlikelier ease. If he has a single point of reference, it's John Coltrane, but the 11 tunes (over 75 minutes) touch several broader bases, from bop (Noto's “Turning Point”) and hard bop (Eisenman's “Sweet Spot”) to the classic “Body and Soul”, and do so in ways that effectively dispel the appearance of derivation.

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