Colors and Shapes in the Groove
Complex yet often surprisingly accessible music that ranges from hard bop to spacy exploration.
Song for All arrived in 1997 when Muhal Richard Abrams was deep into his seventies, still composing with the curiosity and structural ambition that defined his entire career. The album landed quietly on the Italian Black Saint label, the kind of release that found its audience through jazz insiders rather than mass attention. AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow immediately recognized what Abrams had done here: eight compositions that moved between accessible hard bop grooves and genuinely experimental textures, never settling into comfort. The Penguin Guide to Jazz noted something equally important—the presence of vibraphonist Eugene Ghee shifted Abrams's priorities toward color and shape over forward momentum, and it worked.
What makes this record distinct is how unafraid it sounds. Eddie Allen on trumpet and Craig Harris on trombone anchor the ensemble with real swing when needed, but they're equally willing to float into abstraction. The grooves do land straight-ahead on some tracks, which gives the spacy passages elsewhere more weight. This isn't experimental music that dismisses the blues or the swing tradition; it's music that assumes both can coexist with open-ended exploration. Abrams doesn't grandstand. He stays in the ensemble, composing the space as much as filling it.
For listeners new to Abrams, this sits somewhere in the middle of his catalog—neither his most accessible nor his most challenging work. It's the sound of a seasoned composer who had already made his mark on the avant-garde but still believed in writing tunes people could actually latch onto. The album rewards repeated listening, which is exactly what Yanow and the Penguin Guide were saying: there's real substance here, delivered without pretension.
