Album: Billy Hart Quartet - Just

There was a telling remark in Wynton Marsalis’s recent interview with Katty Kay for the BBC show “Influential”. Talking about how jazz functions in real time as a democracy, he said: “Our music requires you to be in balance with other people”, contrasting it with unnamed but all-too-obvious examples in the US of the rise of cultures based on principles diametrically opposed to that, i.e. the search for victory and 'greatness' through bullying and subjugation.

As I listened to Just, the new ECM album from the quartet of octogenarian drum icon Billy Hart, I became rapidly convinced that this group might actually be the best example of that idea in action that there could possibly be - anywhere. The principle of balance, of being assertive yet also giving way is everywhere. After more than two decades of choosing to have a group together bearing the name of their legendary drummer, all four players work freely and yet competely collaboratively.

The idea of balance is synonymous with the leading melodic voice in the group, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner (see also my Album of the Year for 2019, link below). His focused sound, his capacity to deliver tonal beauty in stating a tune is astonishing – take the opening of his own composition “Billy’s Waltz”, which starts off with an echo of Bill Evans’s “Waltz for Debby” but then veers off – but, elsewhere, the flow of invention and adventure in his improvising take the breath away. He also does dare-devil velocity, as in Ethan Iverson’s tune “Aviation”, and makes totally convincing sense of the seemingly aleatoric parts of another compisition “Chamber Music”with its echoes of Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time”, also by Iverson.

Pianist Iverson has that incredible gift to make every note and chord count and to deserve close listening, the musical equivalent of ‘making every word fight for its place’. Another impressively ‘articulate’ musician is Bassist Ben Street, a wonderfully, deeply authoritative player who easily gets into that ‘there are grown-ups in the room’ spirit when he lays down a pulse.

As regards the drum master himself, I just find I smile when I think back to that defining moment, his opening solo from “Sleeping Giant” on Herbie Hancock’s 1971 album Mwandishi where he was given free rein to revel in his perpetually lively and life-giving sound. There are many joyous episodes in “Just” which are reminiscent of that. Billy Hart is just a glorious drum presence, whatever else is going on, his enthusiasm undimmed, his speed and control and command of texture (still) unbelievable. Try the opening of one of his oft-repeated classics, “Layla Joy”.

Just, the group's second album for ECM, was recorded in 2021, and has been mixed with great care and sophistication by Gérard de Haro of La Buissonne studios in France, who has had an important place in defining the ECM sound. The whole enterprise has the feel of being lovingly crafted. 

Take any pace from achingly slow to illegaly quick, or any form, any mood, and these four musicians working as an ideal team, will show you how they can thrive in it, and constantly come up with new and surprising ideas. This totally assured, truthful and blessedly gimmick-free album is thoroughly recommended.

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