2003 · Album
The All-Star Game
Recorded December 2000, ICA Theater, Boston · Eremite Records · Musicians: Marshall Allen and Kidd Jordan (saxophones), William Parker and Alan Silva (bass), Hamid Drake (drums)
Five Masters Trading Fire in Boston
These men swung as hard as they blew, albeit in an entirely new way.
The All-Star Game puts you in a room with two saxophones circling each other, two basses anchoring the floor beneath them, and Hamid Drake keeping time like a conversation rather than a clock. It swings—not in the bebop sense, but in the way a taut rope swings. Marshall Allen and Kidd Jordan trade figures and textures, neither rushing, both listening hard. The music breathes in and out. You hear it: the discipline underneath the apparent freedom, the harmonic awareness that keeps this from dissolving into pure noise.
This was recorded live in December 2000, five players at the top of their powers choosing to work together for one night. AllMusic reviewer Thom Jurek nailed it: these are improvisers who have all played in tight ensembles—big bands, duos, structured units—and they know how to make dynamic interplay count. They're not blowing blind. William Parker and Alan Silva on bass create a landscape that shifts beneath the horns, sometimes supporting, sometimes questioning. The result is neither free jazz nor straight-ahead swing, but something that honors both without belonging entirely to either.
This is not a debut or a peak moment in any of these musicians' careers—it's a session that captured five people working at full attention, improvising with compositional clarity. If you know these players' other work, you'll recognize their voices immediately. If you don't, this is a good place to hear what happens when masters of different backgrounds and vocabularies genuinely listen to each other.
