Half Note - 4525
Recorded April 28-29, 2005
Released October 25, 2005

In December 2002, Donald Harrison, Ron Carter, and Billy Cobham, avatars of three successive musical generations, convened in a Manhattan studio to record five trio tracks and three Harrison-Carter duos. The resulting CD, Heroes (Nagel-Heyer), was one of the most successful documents of collective improvising in recent memory. Nearly three years later, performing on the bandstand of the Blue Note in New York, the trio raised the level of its game. Tapping vast reserves of knowledge in harmony and groove, and playing not one more note than necessary, these masters of jazz talk conjured a spontaneous performance that could be mentioned in the same breath as such definitive on-the-bandstand, sax-bass-drums pinnacles such as Sonny Rollins' Live at the Village Vanguard with Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones, and Joe Henderson's The State of the Tenor with Carter and Al Foster.

In the manner of those masterworks, New York Cool is a celebration of musical narrative, a daring three-way conversation by virtuosi who share hands-on, idiomatic experience in a panoply of groove-based styles and genres, exchanging their thoughts with such clarity and nuance that the absence of a chordal instrument only highlights their acuity. Consider the set-opener, "Body and Soul." Carter and Cobham lock into a rock-steady Brazilian beat, inspiring Harrison's long melodic reply – lines articulated with tart, soulful oomph, phrased between the beats in a manner reminiscent of Charlie Parker, a primary reference. Carter uncorks a gentle, witty variation, using extended techniques with thematic purpose; Harrison returns with a soaring coda, and the ensemble concludes with a melody restatement over a crystal clear 6/8 vamp.

The interplay remains at this exalted level throughout the set, which continues with "Harrisburg Address," a twisty Harrison "I Got Rhythm" variant; the soulful ballad, "Easy Living"; Bird signifiers "I'll Remember April" and "Star Eyes," the former addressed with Parkerish heat and featuring a polyrhythmic Cobham solo of exquisite proportion; a slick 1977 Carter line titled "Third Plane:; and the set-ending "Happy People," a juke-joint-worthy slow blues.

Harrison's play provides ample evidence that he talks the talk worthy of the company he keeps. He can traverse five octaves with seamless grace and deploy the most inventive harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic changes. Hailing from New Orleans, he's also a skilled drummer; his homegrown synthesis of second-line, funk and bebop beat vocabulary, as expressed in the band he co-led with trumpeter Terence Blanchard in the early '80s, influenced jazz's rhythmic grid.

Of equal consequence is "nouveau swing," Harrison's '90s extrapolation of ride cymbal patterns played by early employer Art Blakey, grafted onto swampy, neo-African grooves forged by tambourines and drums in the ceremonial music of New Orleans' Mardi Gras Indians. He learned these at the feet of his father, a widely respected Big Chief of several tribes, a position that Harrison inherited several years ago. "If I write a second-line song, I know the dance, what my feet and shoulders are doing to luck up to the different rhythms of the drums," says Harrison, who refined his abilities at beat organization during his '90s tenure with Eddie Palmieri.

"Music is a language, and you can change the language and add different words. The traditional part is making sure everything matches up." Matching up equals chemistry. Which is why Harrison, age 44, Carter, 68, and Cobham, 60, can alchemize the lingua franca elements of jazz, and spin stories for the ages.

Link to press: All About Jazz