Rainbow Mountain
Trumpeter Lew Soloff keeps excellent company: saxophonist/flutist "Blue" Lou Marini, guitarist Joe Beck, bassist Mark Egan, and drummer Danny Gottlieb, his regular band, are on all but the title track here. They cover a fairly wide range of moods and styles, from the gorgeous, bittersweet Marini ballad "Don't Speak" (shades of 1980s Miles Davis) to Egan's funky "Frog Legs" to covers of classic-rock warhorses "Stairway to Heaven," "Up from the Skies," "Susie Q," and "Born on the Bayou." The only misstep is the opening track, Marini's harshly grating Latin tune "Quiero no Puedo."The leader is a delightfully fluent improvisor, of course, and does some of his best work with the mute in, whether unleashing liquid bebop lines or emphasizing subtle timbres. Marini delivers equal measures of guts and grace, while the underrated Beck nearly steals the spotlight with his distinctive voicings and floating tone (perfect for the two Creedence Clearwater Revival covers). Egan and Gottlieb, who're seemingly joined at the hip, are lithe and flexible yet rock-solid.The title track, with a completely different band, seems to have wandered in from another album. It has: a beat redolent of Brazilian carnival drumming, compliments of Jeff "Tain" Watts; fat, bubbling underpinning from bassists Will Lee and Chulo; funky comping and a few screaming solos from guitarist Hiram Bullock; a Milton Nascimento-like, wordless vocal from Delmar Brown (doubling on synthesizer); trumpeter Miles Evans joining with Soloff for a brassy sound; and tasteful Hammond B-3 from Paul Shaffer unobtrusively filling out the texture. This is definitely the disc's most fusion-y moment, and it works well as a change of pace. The disc as a whole is nicely sequenced and varied, and the subtle musicianship of veteran players pervades every track.--Steve Holtje, JAZZIZ MagazineCopyright © 2000, Milor Entertainment, Inc.--From Jazziz