COMPOSERS: Jackie McLean
LABELS: Mosaic Select
PERFORMER: Jackie McLean, Grachan Moncur III
CATALOGUE NO: MS-001 (distr. +1 203 327 7111; www.mosaicrecords.com)
Mosaic Records was launched in 1983 as the first company devoted exclusively to reissuing jazz recordings in limited-edition boxed sets. Each usually encompassed a specific body of work, such as Thelonious Monk’s complete Blue Note output, Duke Ellington recordings for Capitol, Dean Benedetti’s private Charlie Parker stash and so forth.
The firm celebrates its 20th anniversary by inaugurating Mosaic Select, a series of two- and three-disc collections that focus on significant yet relatively neglected work by a broad range of jazz luminaries.
The series’s first release is culled from early Blue Note recordings by Grachan Moncur iii, who, along with Roswell Rudd, revealed how well the trombone’s power and expressive range lent itself to the open forms and extended playing techniques evolving on the early-Sixties free jazz scene.
Moncur proves much more than a mere sideman on alto master Jackie McLean’s seminal 1963 albums One Step Beyond and Destination Out, and effortlessly leads Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Cecil McBee and Tony Williams through four slippery originals.