Solid Jackson

This second gathering of MTB (titled for the surnames of Brad Mehldau, Mark Turner, and Peter Bernstein), is an intense, focused recital that reinforces the exalted position each member holds in the 2024 jazz landscape.

Everyone listens. No one overplays or goes for "house." The ambiance is one of concentrated excellence. When eminent jazz practitioners with shared histories convene in the studio without rehearsal or preparatory gigs, a perfunctory, by-the-numbers session is often the outcome.

That is decidedly not the case on Solid Jackson, whose personnel, four of whom participated on the well-wrought day-after-Christmas of 1994 Criss Cross album titled Consenting Adults, reside in any hardcore jazz connoisseur's "top-five."