On his long-awaited follow-up to his critically lauded 1996
Criss Cross debut,
Penn's Landing (
Criss 1134), and the equally powerful
Play-Penn (
Criss 1201), from 2001, master drummer-percussionist
Clarence Penn presents
Dali in Cobble Hill, a meditation on how the iconic Surrealist painter might have digested a stroll through Penn's Brooklyn neighborhood. The eight originals and two standards incorporate a variety of moods, flavors, and strategies that reflect Penn's extensive activity as a sideman for jazz' best-and-brightest over the past decades; his ensemble of grandmaster generational contemporaries ---
Chris Potter on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet,
Adam Rogers on guitar, and
Ben Street on bass --- inhabit the stories, playing with deep imagination and virtuosic craft. A must-hear.