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player ready...For Ellington (Modern Jazz Quartet; East-West, 51:58).
The Modern Jazz Quartet seems to have been creatively dormant since its members got back together several years ago, reaching a nadir last year with the MJQ-plus-orchestra album ”Three Windows,” on which John Lewis` writing for strings was oddly stiff and Milt Jackson`s lack of emotional involvement was obvious. Thank heavens, then, that ”For Ellington” is a very different story-a welcome renewal for the MJQ and, it seems safe to say, an instant jazz classic.
Recorded for East-West, the label being launched by the longtime jazz guru at Atlantic, Nesuhi Ertegun, ”For Ellington” includes two originals, Lewis` superb title piece and Jackson`s ”Maestro E.K.E,” plus recastings of such Ellington masterworks as ”Jack the Bear,” ”Ko-Ko,” ”Rockin` in Rhythm” and ”Sepia Panoroma.” One would expect that those compositions, conceived by Ellington for a tonally rich orchestral framework made up of very specific interpreters, could not survive in the spare, piano-vibraphone-bass- drums context of the MJQ. But except for ”Ko-Ko,” whose timbral and rhythmic violence does lie outside the MJQ`s range, Lewis and the rest do a remarkable job of thinking and feeling themselves into Ellington`s sound world.
At times, as on ”Jack the Bear” and ”Sepia Panorama,” the players literally and lovingly reproduce large chunks of the original Ellington recordings, while elsewhere, as on ”Prelude To a Kiss” and ”Rockin in Rhythm,” they reshape the material quite freely. Best of all, the spirit of the music-making is infectious-from the joyously wiggling tremolos that Lewis contributes to the title piece (inspired by Ellington`s ”The Flaming Sword”) to the pleasure that pervades Jackson`s every note. Even drummer Connie Kay is unusually active and alert. Cleanly and realistically recorded, this is an album not to be missed. (Reviewed on CD.)