Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride and Brian Blade: LongGone album review — impressive dialogues

This all-star sax-and-rhythm quartet began with Joshua Redman as leader, recording their first album, MoodSwing, in 1994. Twenty-five years later, the group reconvened as an equal-partners band for a second album, RoundAgain, and set up an extensive but ultimately postponed tour as the MoodSwing quartet. That tour is finally back on — the quartet’s EFG London Jazz Festival gig is already sold out — and the band has a new set of songs.

LongGone opens with saxophonist Redman briefly channelling the ballad artistry of John Coltrane on the title track; the urbane, rhythmically focused lines of Redman’s own aesthetic soon arrive. The light melody of “Disco Ears” comes next, played by soprano sax and built over a bustle of Christian McBride double bass. And then the melancholic “Statuesque” is followed by the tempo-shifting “Kite Song”, before “Ship to Shore” delivers a waltz complexity for the album’s penultimate track. It closes with a recent live recording of “Rejoice”, a song from their debut record.

Redman’s songs have clear harmonic shapes, and the saxophonist marks their contours with precise articulations and subtle phonic asides. Bassist McBride and drummer Brian Blade expertly signpost each twist, turn and change of mood while maintaining an impressive dialogue of sturdy bass counterpoints, cymbal pings, press rolls and walking bass lines.

Solos are split evenly between Redman and pianist Brad Mehldau. Both are on song, but a pensive middle dampens the mood. That said, Redman forcefully interrogates the structures he has penned and his unaccompanied introduction to “Kite Song” is masterful. McBride gets a solo; drum and bass subtleties infuse each track; and Mehldau delivers shifting piano harmonies with engaging rhythmic thrust.

The live “Rejoice”, introduced by Redman as “a tune we used to play a lot back in the early ’90s”, ends the set on a high. Fast, bluesy and played with fire, sax and piano swap phrases, the rhythm section cut and thrust and Mehldau takes wing. Hopefully, a live album will come next.

★★★☆☆

‘LongGone’ is released by Nonesuch