Parallels

Joe Sanders is a first-call bassist for a wide range of jazz musicians and singers. Though hes been playing his own headline gigs for years, he also appeared on 2020s recordings by Joshua Redman, Gerald Clayton, Ben Wendel, and Quentin Collins. Parallels is Sanders third and most intimate album. He plays electric and double basses, piano, and electric piano, programming and vocals, and produced the recording. Hes accompanied by an alternating cast in studio and live recordings from the early 2020s. The albums halves sharply contrast one another. The first four cuts showcase a quartet with saxophonists Logan Richardson (alto), Seamus Blake (tenor), and drummer Greg Hutchinson, playing at Jazz En Tete, Clermont Ferrand, France in 2021. Opener "Dualities" employs three vamp-like grooves, evolving from and transitioning into one another. The first commences with bass and drums before the saxophonists deliver a theme. They then claim the fire in a direct, bluesy three-note pattern that recalls Ornette Coleman and Prime Time. After Richardson and Blake each solo, the band re-emerges -- Hutchinsons kit work moves in skittering directions then corrals everyone before a third modal theme is extrapolated from the skeletons of the other two. The groups chemistry is kinetic, supportive, and virtuosic. "Granma" is a post-bop ballad. Sanders shines guiding his band while Blake lyrically solos before the bridge. Richardson adds drama as the bassist eventually restores the core melodic vamp. "Jai" is a midtempo groover with double-time interplay from the rhythm section; the saxophones enter swinging in unison a la Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane in the 1950s. On final live cut "La Vie Sur la Terre," Sanders frames the saxes, and boldly inserts folk forms from Jamaica and Brazil, filtered through American R&B and jazz. The saxophonists play with silky tones before five-year-old Solal Sanders plays the theme on a melodica. The second half of the album was recorded in Sanders studio. The title track is a lovely songlike bass solo. "Amalfi," with tenor saxophonist Jure Pukl (with whom the bassist plays in Anorok), is a lilting, contemporary jazz tune with a seductive melody. Sanders plays electric piano, drums, and bass, and with Pukl displays instinctive harmonic interplay. The ethereal solo "Aligned," utilizes basses, programming, and shimmering electric piano, as Sanders drumming guides their hovering. He plays arco and plectrum bass on the solo, somber, and sweet "The Rise and Fall of Pipokhun," and quotes Norah Jones in the chorus. "Orangebleu" commences as a dreamy synth interlude that gives way to bass-driven lyric harmony on acoustic and electric instruments and gorgeous drumming. "D.H.," the quietly dramatic closer, features Sanders on basses, programming, percussion, and fingersnaps, with Taylor Eigsti on piano. The latter delivers stunning bookend solos, as Sanders offers a contemporary jazz frame tinged with R&B. Despite, or perhaps because of Parallels differing aesthetic approaches, the bassist asserts hisa creative vision and musicality with imagination, virtuosity, and taste. ~ Thom Jurek