2006 · Album
Give and Go
Recorded 2006 · Criss Cross Jazz · Produced by Gerry Teekens
Five Voices Trading Space and Light
A quintet album that feels more like conversation than performance—players listening hard, reacting, making room.
Give and Go opens into bright, alert alto and tenor saxophone over Steve Cardenas's fingerpicked guitar and Scott Colley's walking bass—the sound is clean and modern, not fusty, with plenty of air between the voices. Gene Jackson on drums keeps things propulsive but never locks into autopilot grooves. John Swana's trumpet adds a second melodic voice that pushes McCaslin into tighter exchanges. The album's best moments happen when someone steps back. McCaslin leads with authority but seems genuinely interested in what Cardenas and Swana are about to do next. This is mature playing—no one is trying to prove anything.
At this point in his career, McCaslin was already working steadily as a sideman while building his own voice as a bandleader. Give and Go sits somewhere between hard bop muscle and the cleaner, more angular sound of 1990s jazz—it's neither retro nor aggressively contemporary. Tracks like the title tune show the band comfortable with standards and originals in the same breath. Jackson's drumming is particularly worth hearing: he's responsive rather than dominant, and his cymbal work has real color.
The album doesn't break new ground and doesn't need to. It's five serious musicians playing at full attention, trading ideas without ego, making choices that serve the music rather than individual spotlight moments. If you want to hear McCaslin before his later experimental turn, this is a solid place to land—he's direct, fluent, and swinging in a way that feels earned rather than inherited.
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