Scatter Some Stones
Andrew Rathbun
A-Records
1999
9 tracks
There's something introspective and quiet in Andrew Rathbun's jazz. This is intellectual music, but Rathbun manages to hold it just this side of deadly academics, infusing it with subtle emotion. Inside what at first sounds like a fairly conventional jazz presentation, there lives something vital and original straining to break free. This is the tension that inhabits Rathbun's compositions and makes them more than just interesting.
This is old music, both because it echoes the best of jazz through the decades, especially the sixties, and because it has a maturity one may or may not expect from a young performer but would possibly be surprised to find in a young composer. While Rathbun clearly has plenty of room to grow, the material on Scatter Some Stones is jazz at the top of its form.
Part of Rathbun's skill is in his selection of players. All the players in this quintet are much more than just competent players, and they all clearly have a solid sense of what this composer's music is all about. The performance here is rich and evocative, bringing the composition off the page and infusing it with emotional depth.
This music has evolved beyond the point where the listener can clearly discern the artist's influences. Still, there is an abundance of hints and illusions that bring to mind such jazz innovators as Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Don Ellis, fellow Canadian Maynard Ferguson, Charlie Parker, and even Antonio Carlos Jobim. Throughout, there can also be heard a pop influence reminiscent of the work of Gerry Rafferty, Paul McCartney and others of that era. It's a full-bodied, exhilarating melding of the past and future of jazz.
Recorded in part at the same time as Jade, Rathbun's subsequent release, and in part a year later, this release retains the same unity and poetic sensibility as can be heard in Jade. The nine tracks here flow so effortlessly and organically together that the one non-Rathbun composition, John Coltrane's "Lazybird," is assumed flawlessly into the greater body.
Anyone interested in the future of jazz should keep an eye on Andrew Rathbun and the musicians he has assembled around him. If "Scatter Some Stones" is any indication, Rathbun will be a strong influence on that future.
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