Easily Slip Into Another World (Henry Threadgill; Novus).
Saxophonist-composer Henry Threadgill`s previous album, ”You Know the Number,” was one of last year`s major jazz events, and this album surely will have a similar impact. The musicians are the same-trumpeter Rasul Siddik, trombonist Frank Lacy, cellist Diedre Murray, bassist Fred Hopkins, and drummers Reggie Nicholson and Pheeroan Aklaff-but they seem even more united than before, while the structural and emotional wit of Threadgill`s writing continues to grow.
Threadgill is fascinated by bits and pieces of the jazz past-particularly, one feels sure, by the multi-faceted work of Jelly Roll Morton and other composer-leaders of the late 1920s. But Threadgill isn`t in the cultural-museum business-which is why the ragtime-march groove of ”Award the Squadtett” (with its sweet but fleeting consonances) or the churning stop-and-start swing of ”Hall” are events that are full of sly references to the past but emphatically take place in the present. (Reviewed on LP.)