Orrin Keepnews' commentary (from his new liner notes): “Just a few weeks after Yusef [Lateef] was added, a booking at the Village Vanguard was used to bring about the recording that is reissued here. Considering how long the four original band members had been working together, it is quite amazing how quickly and how well the two newcomers fit in. The only real difference to be noted between this and previous Adderley band albums might be the absence of any newly written material by either of the Adderley brothers. But two of the half-dozen selections are by Lateef and one by Zawinul. The final number, one of Sam Jones’s rare writer credits, was for quite awhile the band’s standard way of closing each set in a club, but the decision here was to give it a rare full-length performance.”
The Kansas City alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, who was to post-second-world-war jazz what Louis Armstrong had been to its first wave, is as likely to be remembered today for his heroin habit and early death than for his exquisite and melodically stunning improvising. If that era's jazz is like journalism, Parker was its acutely observant war reporter, who kept coming back from the front of his own exploding world with new stories to tell.
Today, in France, they are at least three pianists to have this talent of jazz musician and composer for great formation: Jean-Pierre Como, Antoine Herve and Herve Sellin. If you liked “L'âme soeur” of the first and “Road Movie” of the second, then, inevitably, you will like this “Marciac New York Express”. The compositions remarkable, are inspired (the four movements are connected with masterliness), and never fall into the repetition. The musicians are given some to heart joy: Stephan Guillaume with the clarinet and sax soprano, Stéphane Chausson and Sylvain Beuf with the sax tenor, Claude Egéa with the trumpet, Gueorgui Kornazov with the trombone, Michael Felberbaum with the guitar, Stéphan Caracci with the vibraphone, and the rhythmic made up one of Bruno Rousselet (double bass) and Karl Jannuska (drums) is at this remarkable point.
Enrico Rava (born 20 August 1939 in Trieste, Italy), is a prolific jazz trumpeter and arguably one of the best known Italian jazz musicians. He originally played trombone, changing to the trumpet after hearing Miles Davis. His first commercial work was as a member of Gato Barbieri's Italian quintet in the mid-1960s; in the late 1960s he was a member of Steve Lacy's group. In 1967 Rava moved to New York City, and one month later became a member of the group Gas Mask, a group that had one LP on Tonsil Records in 1970. He has played with artists such as Carla Bley, Jeanne Lee, Paul Motian, Lee Konitz and Roswell Rudd. Chiefly an exponent of bebop jazz, Enrico Rava has also played successfully in avant-garde settings. His style may partly recall Kenny Wheeler's in its spareness and lightness of tone, albeit Rava's is harmonically simpler.