Because They Can (Bert Seager; Antilles).
Few jazz fans will have heard of pianist-composer Bert Seager outside the Boston area, where he lives and works. But this album, Seager`s second, is a thoughtful, hard-swinging delight-reminiscent at times of the more complex, less soul-oriented work that Horace Silver produced in the late 1950s. Seager`s urgent ”Minor Surgery” and ”Tim`s Whim,” plus his arrangement on ”You Don`t Know What Love Is,” all have the flavor of the Silver quintet
(with Hank Mobley and Art Farmer in the frontline) that recorded ”No Smokin` ” and ”Metamorphosis”).
But Seager`s style, both as a composer and a player, finally is his own, thanks in part to the excellent group he has assembled here-trumpeter Tim Hagans, tenor saxophonist George Garzone, bassist Dan Greenspan and drummer Joe Hunt.
Only a bit better known than Seager, Hagans is one of the best young soloists around, his melodically and rhythmically angular lines unfolding with a rare blend of compositional logic and spur-of-the-moment daring; while Garzone`s variations on the now international John Coltrane-style are unusually personal and intense. Best of all, every track has a present-tense passion and commitment to it-reminding one that music that takes account of the jazz past need not be placed within quotation marks. (Reviewed on LP.)