A Father Hears His Son Find His Voice
Redman plays with deep, steamy lyricism, but also a new reverence for jazz tradition that had never been quite so apparent before.
Choices captures Dewey Redman at a point where his playing had become remarkably expansive. Recorded in 1992, these sessions find him balancing two things that had always lived in tension in his work: the fearless harmonic freedom he'd explored with Ornette Coleman and in Old and New Dreams, and a genuine affection for jazz tradition — its language, its forms, its melodic possibilities. The session itself carries weight because of who was in the room. Joshua Redman, Dewey's son, makes his recording debut here, and the presence of that moment — a father and son playing together in a professional studio — gives the album an undercurrent of transmission and witness. This is not a gimmick. Joshua was already a formidable player, and Dewey had already proven he could play with anyone. What matters is that the music works as music. Redman himself is in fine form, playing with all of the authority and warmth his disciples had learned from him over decades. The track selection tells you something about what Dewey wanted to say at this moment: a saxophonist who had helped invent a language was choosing to speak clearly within it. AllMusic reviewer Thom Jurek recognized this shift, calling it a new reverence for the tradition. It was not a retreat. It was an arrival.
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