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The bonus behind Ken Mathieson's promise his band Picante will play classic bebop, jazz standards and Brazilian gems is that the genial drummer has been involved in these musical styles in considerable depth. Fourteen years in the Black Bull Jazz Club's house rhythm section, a spell when a selection of top jazz soloists arrived in Milngavie to count in Mathieson & Co, has given Mathieson a wealth of stories and musical nous as well as access to tunes such as Al Cohn's Pensive that was written out by Cohn himself on request.
On top of that, there was the period in the 1970s when Mathieson lived in Brazil and immersed himself in the goldmine of the local music scene. Hence we heard magic from Edu Lobo's pen and the indelibly catchy – as if there's any other kind – Tom Jobim classic Captain Bacardi, which didn't actually provoke dancing, but couldn't have left many feet unmoved.
With a frontline of alto saxophonist Stewart Forbes and trumpeter Colin Steele and rhythm section partners in the superb Paul Harrison on piano and sure bassist Andy Sharkey, Mathieson delivers music that follows the tradition with vigour and flavour. His own love of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet transmits itself through Forbes especially, with the altoist extemporising with soulfully expressed, deeply penetrating and often witty logic. The session began and ended with master pianist Bud Powell, the brisk Bud's Bubble being complemented by a forthright reading of Thelonious Monk's In Walked Bud, and may have varied in tempo and metre but maintained a high standard through bossa, waltz and groover alike.
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