• Kevin Le Gendre // JazzWise (October 2022)
Like many significant figures in improvised music, pianist-composer-bandleader Horace Tapscott recorded much more material than was released in his lifetime. The Dark Tree label has emerged as a significant curator of his work, and this latest session will be welcomed by converts and newcomers alike.
As was the case with so much of Tapscott’s work, the stage was where he really came alive and the energy levels of the band are high from the downbeat. With no sense of artifice the music shifts seamlessly from tight rhythmic structures to looser, freer passages all the while keeping a strong pulse and hard swing, as befits a bandleader who clearly understood the modernist substance of innovators such as Monk and Jaki Byard. The band is superb, but vocalist Dwight Trible absolutely steals the show with his eruptive interpretation of the gospel anthem ‘Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child’
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