Michael Buckley: Ebb And Flow

Given his world-class chops, tenor saxophonist Michael Buckley's albums have been too infrequent. This is a man who has played with George Coleman when he was still in shorts (Buckley that is), backed Jerry Lee Lewis, collaborated with Dave Liebman and Kenny Wheeler, and toured with The Mingus Big Band. His talents as a composer for television and film, and as a producer—Buckley runs his own Dublin studio—also impose demands on his time, so a new album from the Dubliner is an event. These nine originals of broadly post-bop jazz, also mark Livia Records first contemporary jazz release, following a string of fine archival reissues.

The music was originally composed for a duo with pianist Greg Felton, so no surprise then that Felton's input is so marked, not just in his intuitive interactions with Buckley —fleet unison lines, sympathetic rhythmic steerage and probing counterpoint —but in the emotional weight he brings to the music as well. Buckley and Felton have also played with bassist Barry Donohue and drummer Shane O'Donovan in numerous settings for years, which makes for a cohesive unit, one able to navigate the music's written and improvised contours with gusto.

As a writer Buckley's strengths lie not as much in his facility with different jazz styles—this is not a one-burner, one-swinger, one-ballad, one-blues kind of album—as in his ability to blend the vocabulary of post-bop, swing, modal jazz and free improvisation. Even on freer fair such as "Strange Taste" and "Free-ish," sturdy, somehow familiar rhythms, and bright melodious threads serve as ballast while Buckely and Fenton soar. Buckley's highly melodious rhythmically-charged improvisations, which sound like nobody but himself, thrill and delight—especially on the feisty "In A Foul Mode" and "Sea Legs," a slower number of elegant character.

There is an episodic feel to the album's longer cuts, "Golden Road" and Felton's "May Story," where form and freedom, variation in tempi and mood changes coalesce. These shifts are graduated, logical and engaging—this is music that invites the listener in while demanding attention. Felton cites Andrew Hill and Jason Moran as constant inspirational companions, and in both the pianist's and in Buckley's language the predominant ties are to African American jazz traditions.

But like an old tree, strong yet supple, that bends in strong winds before straightening again, the music's traditional roots seamlessly absorb more modernist traits. There is a hint of Sun Ra in Felton's splashy abstractions in "Free-ish," while the pianist's delicate pointillism in the instrument's highest register lends an impressionistic underbelly to "That's All Fowlkes;" the latter is Buckley's achingly beautiful tribute to the late trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, with whom the saxophonist played in Glen Hansard's band.

In the liner notes Felton unpacks the compositions, his descriptions of chordal structures, modes, polyrhythmic concepts and tonal centers underlining the layers involved. These explanations will perhaps appeal more to musicians eager to peek under the hood. Suffice it to say, for all the formal complexities, this is music that speaks primarily to the emotions—directly, boldy and handsomely.

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