For those unaware, when your godfather was legendary bassist Richard Davis and family friends included drummers Max Roach, Michael Carvin, Charles Moffett and Freddie Waits, it’s no surprise that Eric McPherson gravitated towards music.

And if your mentors were saxophonist Jackie McLean and pianist Andrew Hill, McPherson attaining status as one of the preeminent drummers of his generation became almost preordained. McLean, who worked with a host of legends behind the kit, called McPherson his favorite drummer.

Nearly 20 years after his first album and extensive work with peers and masters, McPherson returns as a leader with an ambitious new release. Double Bass Quartet continues the long lineage of multi-bass recordings with two of the best, John Hébert and Ben Street, both of whom have long experience with the leader.

Filling out the group is one of the rising stars of jazz, Cuban pianist David Virelles. Says McPherson: “I’ve known Ben for almost 20 to 30 years now. We have a great rapport. I felt like he and John would complement each other conceptually. And David is one of the few piano players out here today that I have a nice rapport with and his rhythmic sensibility is off the charts, so he’s very comfortable in a number of different settings.”.

Indeed the album hints in its title at the fundamental elements that make Rothenberg’s unaccompanied excursions so compelling: its deft, multi-hued weaving and the spellbinding eloquence of its unfolding narratives. “I think of those elements as the X and Y axes of my approach”, Rothenberg explains. “In my improvisations, there are the more melodic pieces that have a definite sense of starting at a certain place and taking you along a storyline. Then there are the loom pieces which present the listener a rich and atypical environment in which to weave their own subjective narrative”.

1. Ode To You
2. Blind Pig
3. Illusion Suite [Stanley Cowell]
4. Solo Drum
5. Darn That Dream
6. Transmission
7. Ashes
8. Skippy [Thelonious Monk]
9. Cinco Y Quatro [Jaki Byard]

With the music having been recorded with and without an audience at Hunter College’s Ida K. Lang Recital Hall, this quite magnificent new recording opens on the probing hooks and rhythms of Ode to Von and an effortlessly moody Blind Pig before next giving us their swinging rendition of the Stanley Cowell cut Illusion Suite, an expressive drum solo from McPherson and a melodically charged Darn that Dream.

Along next is the veritable dreamscape that is organically created within the simply heavenly Transmission and that is itself backed seamlessly by the airiness of Ashes, the set rounding out on the Thelonious Monk classic Skippy, concluding on the vibrantly rhythmic hipsway of Jaki Byard’s Cinco y Quatro.

Double Bass Quartet is the latest entry in Giant Step’s new series Modern Masters and New Horizons. Specially curated by trumpeter Jason Palmer and drummer Nasheet Waits, the series features artists who have helped shape the modern jazz landscape along with rising voices doing the same for the next generation. Artists currently slated to contribute include saxophonists Neta Raanan and Edward Pérez/Michael Thomas.

Eric McPherson - Artist