Roswell Rudd, Fay Victor, Lafayette Harris, Ken Filiano - Embrace (2017)

For his follow up to 2016’s purely improvised studio recording Strength & Power (a cooperative quartet album featuring pianist Jamie Saft, bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Balazs Pandi), the ever adventurous trombonist composer Roswell Rudd made a decided shift in direction on his first RareNoise Records release as a leader by embracing jazz standards he has loved and played throughout his long and illustrious career.

"Accompanied by the brilliant pianist Lafayette Harris, upright bass virtuoso Ken Filiano and soulful vocal sensation Fay Victor, the 81 year old jazz master delivers with rare potency and poignancy on the aptly titled Embrace.

This intimate, drum Less quartet session is brimming with conversational playing between all the participants, with Rudd and Victor partaking in some particularly interactive exchanges on jazz classics like Billy Strayhorn’s “Something to Live For,” Charles Mingus’ “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” Thelonious Monk’s beautiful ballad “Pannonica,” the standard “Can’t We Be Friends” and the traditional “House of the Rising Sun.”