Jazz

John McNeil, "East Coast Cool" - 4 stars

'East Coast Cool" (OmniTone) is one of the most creative evocations of the sound of an earlier jazz group -- without slavish imitation of that group -- I've ever heard. The group in question is baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan's 1950s quartet with trumpeter Chet Baker. Trumpeter John McNeil -- with baritone saxophonist Allan Chase, bassist John Hebert and drummer Matt Wilson -- takes the Mulligan group's sound "outside," meaning into free jazz territory. But McNeil does it subtly, in an organized way, so that often you don't realize this tune has no chord changes or that tune is full of time modulations or another tune floats free of overt tempo.

The ensemble work has the light, jaunty, lyrical, often happy feeling of Mulligan, and the solos stay in character with the tune being played. Chase is more Mulligan than McNeil is Baker, and the rhythm section is miles ahead in modernity of Mulligan's kept-in-its-place rhythm sections. McNeil labored over the album's 10 originals for several years, refining what worked (horn harmony akin to Mulligan and Baker) and what didn't (polyphony, although Mulligan and Baker employed it frequently).

"Deadline" opens the album with a bright stop-and-go melody modified by off-kilter rhythms along the way. If you're a Mulligan fan, Chase's solo immediately gives you hope that this album might be a winner. (It is, all the way.) Later in the set, "Wanwood" suggests one of those lovely ballads Mulligan wrote with such poetic grace. Bernie Miller's "Bernie's Tune," a famous West Coast jazz standard, appears here in a tricky, playful new arrangement.

McNeil's trumpet style is full of busy, running phrases and angular leaps connected by smooth articulation. Chase's tone, nuances and taste are the Second Coming of Mulligan.