[utube foo=”CghKMuU0hTU”]When you were young and your heart was like an open book, you used to say, live and let live! Well now that you\u2019re more experienced, you\u2019ll certainly enjoy The Cookers, a super-septet of legendary jazz musicians who\u2019ve lived and let live. Their newest release for Motema called Believe, is a staunch reminder of the collective talents of five of its members \u2013tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, trumpeter Eddie Henderson, pianist George Cables, bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Billy Hart. <\/p>\n
These five have performed with such great jazz musicians as Lee Morgan, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper and Charles Lloyd and together, they are the perfect combination for the septet\u2019s innovative founder\/ trumpeter David Weiss and exceptionally talented alto saxophonist Craig Handy. Harper, Cables, McBee and Hart composed all of the songs with the exception of \u201cFree For All\u201d which was composed by Wayne Shorter.<\/p>\n
The set opens with the \u201cBelieve, For It\u2019s True,\u201d a track from Harper\u2019s 1980 album The Believer. The daring solos emanating from Harper\u2019s tenor saxophone and Weiss\u2019 trumpet form the basis for this great composition that keeps you interested from the first note to the last. The adventurous explorations continue on McBees\u2019 beautiful ballad called \u201cTemptation(s),\u201d which segues into \u201cEbony Moonbeams,\u201d another beautiful gem written by George Cables. <\/p>\n
The Cookers heat things up with Wayne Shorter\u2019s \u201cFree For All,\u201d arranged by Weiss and on which five great solos take this set to another level. Listeners will certainly appreciate the daring improvisations that definite say something about the top-to-bottom command of their instruments. This set really cooks! Overall, this recording is an explosive set of post-bop originals that will make you Believe in The Cookers!<\/p>\n
[sotj]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[utube foo=”CghKMuU0hTU”]When you were young and your heart was like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8617"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8678,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8617\/revisions\/8678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}