Ten

Jason Moran's 2010 effort Ten features more of the jazz pianist's smart and forward-thinking jazz. Backed by bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, Moran reveals himself once again to be a nimble improviser with an ear toward atmospheric and often fractured hypnotic post-bop jazz on tracks like the lilting "Blue Blocks" (commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art) and "RFK in the Land of Apartheid," along with ruminative numbers buoyed by the band's laid-back blues inflections and ever-so-subtle funk grooves. Other tracks, such as "Feedback Pt. 2" and "Old Babies," reveal Moran's more experimental edge, mixing sound effects and his son's voices with more straight-ahead jazz stylings that bring to mind both Thelonious Monk and Oscar Peterson. As always with Moran, there is a heavy classical influence, and compositions like his own "Pas de Deux -- Lines Ballet" and his rambunctious take on Leonard Bernstein's "Big Stuff" do evince, much like the rest of Ten, both a romantic and modernist point of view. ~ Matt Collar

何かが、変わった。その予感は、確かにあった。この数年に渡っている大御所チャールズ・ロイドとの活動が契機なような気がする。屈強で硬質なピアニズムは、現役屈指の個性派であることに変わりはない。彼の心の師でもあるセロニアス・モンクの名曲《クレスプキュール・ウィズ・ネリー》にこれほどまで、新しい解釈を加えることができる男は、彼以外には絶対にいない。それにしてもモランのピアノは、これほどまでに雄弁にメランコリックであっただろうか。トリオ結成10周年記念盤にして過去最高の一枚。
intoxicate (C)稲田利之