Gary Burton's contribution to the ECM Rarum series is not nearly as willfully devoted to esoterica as some others, preferring to give listeners a concise evolution of the quartets and quintets he led from 1973 to 1986. The first quartet, with guitarist
Mick Goodrick, bassist
Abe Laboriel, and drummer
Harry Blazer, disappears after one straightforward track ("Four or Less") -- and a very young but still brilliant
Pat Metheny (on electric 12-string guitar), bassist
Steve Swallow, and drummer
Bob Moses join
Goodrick and
Burton to bring more diverse colors to their sound while still burning at a rarefied, relatively quiet emotional level. There is a sizeable gap in the survey (1976-1982), and when it resumes with an urbane, relaxed performance of
Mingus' "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love,"
Jim Odgren is on alto saxophone, the sole representative track of the five-year period where
Burton swapped the guitar leads for horns. In two excerpts from
Real Life Hits, horns are out and then-recent Berklee School alumnus pianist
Makoto Ozone is in, with saxophonist
Tommy Smith making the band a quintet again in the final track, "La Divetta." Interestingly, the tracks with
Ozone have a higher energy level than the rest of the collection, leaving the impression, true or not, that
Ozone was the energizing element. As a survey of
Burton's working bands in mid-career -- aided by a detailed look at this period by
Burton in his liner notes -- this collection achieves its modest goal, leaving another
Burton ECM project (the records with
Chick Corea) to the
Corea volume in the Rarum series. ~ Richard S. Ginell