Following a roughly seven-year break,
Buster Williams returned to recording with 2018's
Audacity, a stylish debut for the
Smoke Sessions label featuring his quartet. While he had stayed active teaching and performing with others,
Williams hadn't led a group for a studio album since the mid-2000s. If
Audacity was a revelation, reintroducing the journeyman bassist's urbane and nuanced approach to acoustic post-bop, then his
Smoke Sessions follow-up, 2023's
Unalome (the Buddhist symbol for individual transcendence), is a further statement of his generous and artful skills as a bandleader. 80 years old at the time of recording,
Williams is paragon of longevity, with a career that stretches back over five decades and connects him to such artists as
Herbie Hancock, the
Jazz Crusaders,
Woody Shaw, and many others. He brings all of this deep experience to bear on his work here, together with his longtime trio featuring drummer
Lenny White and pianist
George Colligan, as well as vocalist
Jean Baylor, saxophonist
Bruce Williams, and vibraphonist
Stefon Harris. While
Williams had played everything from lyrical standards to avant-garde space jazz, his music here is deeply lyrical with his group largely framing
Baylor with warm group arrangements.
Baylor, who is best known for her work alongside husband drummer
Marcus Baylor in the Grammy-nominated jazz and gospel group the
Baylor Project, has a diamond-rich voice. Her work with
Williams on tracks like the opening "Stairways" and their languid reading of
Bruno Martino's "Estate" is intimate and blue-hued, evoking the bassist's early '60s work as a member of vocalist
Nancy Wilson's band. Equally compelling is the hard-swinging "Tayashima" (a
Williams composition dedicated to his daughter and originally recorded for his classic 1975 album
Pinnacle) and the shimmering "The Wisdom of Silence," where
Baylor's wordless vocal melody sparkles star-like against
Williams' woody bass and
Harris and
Colligan's cascading chordal harmonies. Elsewhere, they offer a swaggering take on "42nd Street" and put their own soulful stamp on the
Shirley Horn trademark tune "Here's to Life." ~ Matt Collar
