Jeff Rupert and George Garzone, The Ripple | The Vinyl Anachronist

Part-Time Audiophile

What’s better in contemporary jazz than a killer tenor sax player? Two killer tenor sax players? That’s one of the main ideas behind The Ripple from veteran sax players Jeff Rupert and George Garzone. The other idea, ostensibly the main theme, is “the ripple.” That refers to Lester Young and how his method of improvisation influenced so many musicians in jazz–even those who didn’t play the sax. The Ripple, therefore, isn’t filled with Lester Young tunes. It’s filled with tunes made famous by those he influenced such as Stan Getz, Eddie Harris, Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson. These themes are important, of course, and they’re what obviously inspired this album. But the true joy of The Ripple is to pull back a bit and listen to Jeff Rupert and George Garzone play together and to take turns. Each one has a distinctive tone–one more mellow and breathy, the other more powerful and straight–but they both employ those rhythmic undercurrents that can be directly attributed to Young. On the surface, this is straightforward be-bop, beautifully played by a quintet (pianist Richard Drexler, drummer Marty Morell and bassist Jeremy Allen) that has shared a stage for decades. While I’ve listened to Jeff […]

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