Jazz

OA2 Records · 18 September 2026

The record opens with «Ablution», a Lennie Tristano tune, and with the formula already stated: sax, double bass and drums, no harmonic instrument to say where the chords sit. Five minutes of free alto sax over a base that comes apart and reassembles itself, with Jon Hamar on double bass. Of the ten tracks, three are standards and seven are contrafacts (new melodies written over existing chord changes), five of them DelGiudice’s own. «P.O.I.», Hamar’s tune, is the longest at nearly nine minutes and the one that leaves the most air: whole stretches where the trio stops and waits. On Steve Swallow’s «Falling Grace», the melody runs a narrow path and it’s the drums that do the moving.

Splitting the drum chair between two players is the hardest thing to get past. Obed Calvaire plays on six tracks and Jim White on the other four, and the record comes out with two different cymbal sounds and two different ways of accompanying that never quite melt into one. In a format this bare, the switch announces itself from the first bar of each piece.

The best moment is «Darn That Dream», a standard Lee Konitz cut several times over, reduced here to a six-and-a-half-minute pencil sketch. OA2 Records puts it out running sixty-five minutes in total.

Rating: 6.9/10

Text by Aina Torrents