Chris Potter - 2007 "Follow the Red Line" - Live at Village Vanguard

In a rare move, saxophonist Chris Potter has released two CDs on the same day, and on the same label—Song For Anyone, his first album for a large ensemble; and Follow the Red Line: Live at the Village Vanguard, featuring the Underground band that's been touring for the past couple of years. Risky, perhaps, but Potter's significance—the clear torch-carrier for the recently departed Michael Brecker— continues to grow, and is one of a limited number of artists who can actually pull it off.

Potter's discography has been getting better with each passing year, but Underground (Sunnyside, 2006) was a true watershed, where conception, composition and performance came together for the most distinctive and fully realized album of his career. Follow the Red Line is even better, featuring the same group but with guitarist Adam Rogers in place of Wayne Krantz, whose sharp attack and oblique lines were amongst Underground's defining points. Those only familiar with Rogers' largely acoustic Criss Cross discs, including 2005's Apparitions, may be surprised to hear him kick such serious butt here, but those who've heard his mid-1990s work with Lost Tribe know that he's undeniably capable of this kind of electrified, rock-and funk-edged music.

The gentle opening fanfare of "Train" starts the set on a lyrical and subdued note, but it's not long before drummer Nate Smith kicks in with a visceral funk groove, bolstered by Craig Taborn's uncannily dichotomous Fender Rhodes. Potter takes the first solo, building from ground zero to the stratosphere and demonstrating the kind of paradoxical blend of restraint and reckless abandon that makes his extended solos not just consistently captivating, but exhilarating. The same goes for Rogers, whose solo begins in melodic simplicity, but quickly takes off with a raucous energy and linear invention that's the main reason why he, along with Ben Monder, are two of New York's most in-demand guitarists across a wide swatch of styles. His tone is dense and sustaining, with a punchy attack and, like Potter, has an ability to milk the simplest of vamps for all it's worth.

Taborn gets to do the same thing during the unrelenting, single-chord vamp that's at the core of "Arjuna," with Rogers soul-drenched single-line anchoring hand-in- glove with Smith's loose and unyieldingly responsive groove. "Pop Tune #1" offers a brief respite; a countrified ballad where Roger's rich, sustaining chords support Potter's singable melody before taking a blues-drenched lead. Rogers builds dramatically, only to suddenly dissolve as Potter morphs the tune into another lengthy and funk-laden vamp where everyone raises the temperature during his blistering and idea-filled solo.

It's an exercise in futility to find a name for the music of Follow the Red Line. But as Potter blurs the lines between jazz, rock, funk and even a little afro- beat in ways that are finally being accepted again two decades after The New York Times declared the "pestilence known as fusion is dead," the best word to describe this recording is, quite simply, great.

Chris Potter's quartet Underground should be looked upon as one of the many facets in the saxophonist's prismatic view of contemporary jazz. Certainly the band is oriented toward a progressive jazz image with the electric guitar work of the brilliant Adam Rogers and Craig Taborn's witty and pungent Fender Rhodes keyboard.

Assumedly the concept of Underground harks somewhat to the fusion of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea. But Potter's vision with this combo goes beyond those static and funkier values, entering a wilder, unabashed, and fierce aggression that cannot be corralled. In live performance at the storied Village Vanguard nightclub in Greenwich Village, you expect and receive long drawn-out compositions, extended solos especially from Potter, and new music tried out as audience experiments.

"Train" is a long 16-minute trip, with mixed meters starting in 3/4 and going to 6/8, building momentum and leading to alternating beats of nine and seven and Potter's extended opening salvo solo. This is intense music -- sliced, diced, marinated, and flash-seared by Potter. "Arjuna" (not the Yusef Lateef composition) is a spectral sound analysis, lower key and illuminated, with a drum solo from Nate Smith, a Rhodes solo, choppy sax, and a workout from Potter and Rogers. Fond of interval leaps and overblown harmonic displacements, Potter's tenor is driven during "Viva Las Vilnius" over a quirky rhythmic idea meshed with a funky bottom end and Latin or ethnic inferences.

The last two pieces of the set are decidedly settled, as Taborn's soulful electric piano on the sparse ballad "Zea" places the group in a calmer place and Potter plays delicate bass clarinet in an upper register atypical of its usual throaty sound. The finale, "Togo," is a version of the great melodic composition drummer Ed Blackwell brought to the repertoire of Old and New Dreams. It's very well rendered, with Potter sticking to bass clarinet, understating the melody with reverence and respect before Taborn goes crazy, stepping up the vibe into a funky mode while Potter switches to tenor and plays the calmer final chorus.

For Potter's fans, this is a worthwhile addition to his growing discography. Considering Potter as a new music composer, this indicates how his music is changing and still flowering, and in a developmental stage. Evidently Potter and the audience were very pleased with the results, and perhaps a second volume of these sessions is in the can.

Track Listing:

1. Train
2. Arjune
3. Pop Tune #1
4. Viva Las Vilnius
5. Sea
6. Togo

Personnel:

Chris Potter: tenor saxophone, bass clarinet;
Adam Rogers: guitar;
Craig Taborn: Fender Rhodes;
Nate Smith: drums.