Kirk MacDonald

NEW BEGINNINGS

Radioland RACD 10016

New Beginnings' grooves full of imagination

Kirk MacDonald's latest CD is one of his best. The band is brilliant: Rob Smith on trumpet, Lorne Lofsky on guitar, Brian Dickinson on piano, Neil Swainson on bass, Jerry Fuller on drums, and MacDonald on tenor sax, occasionally overdubbing alto.

With blue chip grooves thus guaranteed by these players, among the best in Canada, MacDonald has an ideal vehicle for blowing his seven original songs in the most thorough possible way. Swainson adds one of his songs to complete the eight-pack.

A typical m.o. for this band is demonstrated on the first track, On The Sierra Nevada, inspired, MacDonald says in his liner notes, by a trip through those saw-toothed crags.

Dickinson lays down a running rhythmic vamp, the tune is first stated by the two horns, playing in a unison so well blended they sound like one. A second trip through the tune breaks into a kind of harmony based on fourths (instead of the more common thirds or sixths) where every chord sounds suspended. A third statement with an over-dubbed alto layers in another harmony part and then the solos begin.

First to solo is Smith, racing along through the changes like the scenery running past your window on a mountain drive. MacDonald takes over on tenor with that rich, timbre-laden, full spectrum sound that is one of his trademarks.

MacDonald solos at top speed, running mostly on scales, but doing it with the utmost fluency, intensity and eloquence. Dickinson then comes in with a light, more chorally based solo before the tune returns to take us out.

It's a heady trip, an announcement of good things to come. Every player in this outstanding sextet can hold your attention for several swings through the changes and leave you wishing for more.

Highlights of the rest of the CD include a new version of Kirk's Blues (also on MacDonald's Atlantic Sessions CD) in which Swainson puts the pedal to the metal with a relentless drive that acts like jet fuel on the imaginations of MacDonald and Lofsky.

They improvise together, flying circles and spirals around each other before finally dancing themselves to a standstill so that Fuller and Swainson can exchange eight bar solos in witty dialogue, and then restart the jet-assisted tempo from where MacDonald and Lofsky parked it.

Each track shows imagination and thought in the way the solos are layered in, and MacDonald's tunes are both the instrumental kind which wind around a single motif or two, and the melodic kind like Calendula, a little song for his daughter Virginia, singable enough to catch a child's ear.

This is a CD that bears repeated listening with satisfaction attending every hearing. While the music is often dense and detailed, there is a justness in the proportions, a balance among the solos, and a seamlessness in the ensemble that only comes when first-rate players run full-out on intuition guided by superb aural perception.

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