Canadian acoustic jazz bassist Brandi Disterheft has worked with some heavyweights in her young career, citing mentors Rodney Whitaker or Don Thompson and saxophonist Jane Bunnett. The liner notes refer to an endorsement from Prince, and acknowledgement to Björk for the title Debut. This is not a jazz recording with pop sensibilities, but a meticulously crafted modern jazz effort that showcases a group sound rather than Disterheft's chops. Fellow musicians from Toronto are featured in trio, quartet, or sextet formats. There are two selections that pay direct homage to Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, and the tenor sax-trumpet front line hard bop sound of the '60s. "Dandy Dangle" is a brash in-your-face swinger that exudes the democratic approach Blakey embraced, while "Sixty Dollar Train" has the bright and happy feeling that identified the universal Blue Note records slant that served the company and its listeners so well. Of the trio selections featuring piano-bass-drums, "Pennywort" easily slides from waltz to spirit funk and back, while "Little Space I Need to Fill" (aka Detroit") clearly is dedicated to Detroiter Whitaker, and is the young person's slow funk jam typical of the Bad Plus. Disterheft is fond of the 3/4 time signature as it shows up on the juggernaut "Duke's Dead" and "Auto-Beauties," buoying the scat vocal and lyrics sung by Sophia Perlman. A bit of free improvised music, a pretty pop ballad again sung by Perlman, and the good modal stop-start tick-tock infused "Dah-Knee-Low" (for Danilo Perez) uses the smaller groups, and showcases the clean pianistics of either Adrean Farrugia or David Virelles, who are both excellent. It will be interesting to see what direction Disterheft takes stylistically, but considering she composed all of this music, it would be wise to keep track of her. Likely she's bound for big things.
© Michael G. Nastos /TiVo