GREG OSBY — Public (review)

GREG OSBY — Public album cover Live album · 2004 · Eclectic Fusion Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
snobb
Greg Osby was one of the key-figure of the then fresh and creative M-Base movement, together with another great sax player Steve Coleman. Those times are more a history now, and Greg's latest live album, "Public", is an evidence. Opposite to Coleman, who enjoys (alternative) star status since developing their invented M-Base sound, Osby as a leader rarely received a good critics reviews. With years, his early music, containing rap and guitars drifted towards more conservative mainstream jazz.

Osby's "Public" is recorded on his quartet tour, supporting his "St Louis Shoes" studio album, one among Greg's most successful releases. The band is almost the same, as on the studio recording and contains, besides Osby himself on saxes, bassist Robert Hurst, trumpeter Nicholas Payton on four tracks and lesser known Japanese pianist Megumi Yonezawa, instead of Harold O'Neal, who participated in the album's recording in the studio.

The program, recorded in New York's Jazz Standard, illustrates quite well Osby's direction of the time. The album contains (hardly recognizable) Summertime, Parker and Gillespie's Shaw Nuff, Lover Man, Bernie's Tune, and three Osby originals. Rooted in hard/post bop, there are lot of soloing, sometimes testing the dissonance borders. Still, the album's main problem is the band sounds like they are right in the middle of the road, and during the whole concert can't decide what the way to choose.

On closer renown pop-singer Joan Osborne joins the quartet. Her "Lover Man" sounds quite interesting, but doesn't fit logically under the night's program.
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