Shortly before he signed with RCA, the fine hard bop tenor saxophonist
Don Braden
recorded this fairly straight-ahead quintet date with trumpeter
Tim Hagans
, pianist
Kenny Werner
, bassist
Larry Grenadier
and drummer
Billy Hart
. The instrumentation differs on some of the tracks, with
Hagans
on around half the songs,
Werner
sometimes sitting out, and
"Lush Life"
being taken as a tenor/piano duet. There are some surprises along the way, with a few of the standards reharmonized a little, "Scrapple from the Apple" being played largely without chords (a la
Ornette Coleman
), and "I Thought About You" becoming a tenor/bass duet. An excellent outing that finds
stretching a bit beyond his hard bop roots. ~ Scott Yanow