Yellowjackets Timeline

Contemporary jazz ensemble Yellowjackets' 2011 Mack Avenue debut, Timeline features the band's longstanding knack for straddling the line between smooth jazz and more cerebral post-bop stuff. Marking the group's 30 years in the business, the album is a perfect mix of low-key, soulful moments and more funky, angular jazz.

With 2018's Raising Our Voice, long-running crossover jazz outfit Yellowjackets offer a sophisticated, broadly stylistic collection of songs showcasing Grammy-winning Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza as a guest artist on seven of the 13 tracks. The second album the band has recorded since the departure of founding bassist Jimmy Haslip, Raising Our Voice introduces newest member Dane Alderson on bass, taking over from Felix Pastorius' seat, who left the fold after 2016's Cohearance. As with that album, Raising Our Voice finds Yellowjackets exploring a harmonically nuanced bed of post-bop and fusion-influenced sounds that remain audience-accessible even as they reveal the members' talents for investigative soloing and improvisational interplay. In this department, saxophonist Bob Mintzer excels, able to evince a deft balance between the probing modalism of John Coltrane and the lyrical soulfulness of Grover Washington, Jr.

Electric bassist Jimmy Haslip hasn't had a prolific solo career, Nightfall being his third release in eighteen years, since his debut, Arc (GRP, 1993). Haslip's energy has mainly been devoted to the Yellowjackets, the band he co-founded with pianist/keyboardist Russell Ferrante thirty years ago—a milestone celebrated with the release of Timeline (Mack Avenue Records, 2011), which finds Haslip and the band in truly fine form. That the Yellowjackets has overshadowed Haslip's solo career is unsurprising, though Haslip has also distinguished himself in guitarist Robben Ford and Allan Holdsworth's bands, in addition to amassing numerous credits as a producer. Nightfall reunites Haslip with keyboardist/producer Joe Vannelli, who also collaborated on Haslip's Red Heat (Unitone, 2000), and explores rhythmic and melodic terrain quite distinct from the Yellowjackets.