Unlike labels that pigeonhole their up-and-coming performers, Fresh Sound New Talent gives emerging artists a free hand to find structures that best express their own voices. On bassist
Chris Lightcap's
Bigmouth, he draws on two players from a contemporaneous Fresh Sound release, fellow bassist Eivind Opsvik's
Overseas. Yet even with drummer
Gerald Cleaver anchoring both sessions and
Tony Malaby contributing hard-hitting tenor to each, the recordings differ greatly. Unlike the dark impressionistic fusion of Opsvik's date,
Lightcap draws on the influence of
Ornette Coleman and his vision of bop pushed to the emotional edge. The tunes "Celebratorial" and the aptly titled "Loopy" sound like pages ripped from the
Ornette playbook. The paired tenors of
Malaby and
Bill McHenry (another Fresh Sound regular) make for a powerful front line, which
Lightcap exploits to the maximum on "Neptune," where the two hornmen go head to head in an updated version of the tenor battle. Showing he's hip to current trends, though,
Lightcap inserts a cover of
the Beatles' "Dig a Pony" in the middle of the recital, a surprise at first, but rendered to blend with the rest of the program.
Lightcap and
Cleaver, who gets to exercise his free-within-the-groove delivery, make for a formidable rhythm team.
Lightcap grounds the ensemble with pedal points and declamatory countermelodies. His solos lean toward folk song-like lyricism. (Interestingly, as different as he and Opsvik are as composers and bandleaders, they answer to similar muses on bass.) This is a forward-looking session that does something old-fashioned -- it cooks. ~ David Dupont