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Album DetailsActing Director of Jazz Studies at Oberlin, this Houston-born trumpet player and educator may not be as widely recognized as his hornplaying contemporaries, yet Hugh Ragin has been slowly making a name for himself on the bandstand as well as in the classroom. Ragin's technique is phenomenal.
Combining harmonic daring, rhythmic ingenuity and spatial thinking, his solos outstrip most of his peers in technical skill and imagination. With its trumpet/tenor/bass/ drums lineup of outcats and decided taste for energy playing, the Hugh Ragin Quartet will no doubt be compared to Ornette's classic Quartet and John Zorn's Masada, but the Ragin‚s new foursome is closer to Albert Ayler's spiritual unity than Zorn's sephardic swing. Israeli-born tenor saxophonist Assif Tsahar, one of New York's brightest-burning stars in the new jazz firmament, wields his horn like a divine blowtorch, either focused like a diamond-blue flame or wide open, a full-on blast of energy not heard since the heady days of ESP. He also has a powerful presence on bass clarinet, covering the gamut with an earthy and resonant command. Tempering the fires of youth are the seasoned rhythm section of bassist William Parker and Hamid Drake, who play as if they are tapped into the infinite rhythm of creation. Revelation is the sound of the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, blues as life, blues as love, blues as communication withoutwords.
Enjoy.
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