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Take it literally. Bassist Ben Wolfe is one heavy cat, having paid dues with both Marsalis brothers, Diana Krall and Harry Connick, Jr., to name a few. Ben's fourth album as a leader, No Strangers Here, finds the leader/bassist accompanied by some of the heavyweights he has worked through the for years, including Marcus Strickland, Branford Marsalis, Terell Stafford, Luis Perdomo, Greg Hutchinson, and Jeff "Tain" Watts.

No Strangers Here is spirited like a classic hard bop outing, yet introspective, darkly personable, and full of musical questions and odd answers, similar to the subterranean sounding work mad jazz genius, Wayne Shorter. And like Shorter, Wolfe claims soundtrack music as a source of inspiration.

"[Soundtracks] are something I'd love to do," Wolfe told All About Jazz. "But in a jazz context. I've always been attracted to that sound, like the low piano kind of stuff, like Jerry Goldsmith, Planet Of The Apes, and Bernard Herrmann. And also, as silly as it may sound, even the music on some of those '70s TV shows, like Barnaby Jones. Some of those shows have great music. I just like the sound. It's hard to describe; it's just a certain kind of sound. Also, [scoring films would] be a real challenge. It'd give me an opportunity to write a lot of different types of stuff, within a jazz style. I love the sound of music coming through the speakers in a theater. For some reason I've always wanted to do it. So I just started writing music for my CDs as if it were a film, in a way. In a lot of ways, I put records together that way. I think of it as if you were seeing a play. I try to have some connection between the pieces, and how it goes together, as if it were connected to something else."

No Strangers Here includes semi chamber pieces (with string quartet) as well as more typical straight ahead jazz arrangements. The ensemble playing is tight, low down, and clean as a whip.

"I chose to combine a jazz and string quartet to give myself a wide range of options as a composer yet to retain the feeling of a small ensemble," Wolfe says. "The music ranges from the lush title track, ‘No Strangers Here,' to the more chamber music sounding, ‘Rosy & Zero.'"

"The Minnick Rule" kicks off the album in blistering fashion.

Ben Wolfe
"The Minnick Rule" (mp3)
from "No Strangers Here"
(MAXJAZZ)

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Neil Cowley--A Wizard, A True Star: London jazz pianist Neil Cowley hits the U.S. on a massive wave of British hype. Remember, this is a country that calls Jamie Cullum's Billy Joel-inspired fluff "jazz" as well.  

"One of the big jazz stories of the year" (Guardian 2007), "Displaced, Best album 2007,"  and so on and so forth. Loud...Louder...Stop! follows Displaced's pop jazz with a similar menu. While Cowley isn't really a jazz pianist--he mines a simple pop motif for all it's worth, pounding funkish rhythms over even funkier drumming until the listener can't help but embrace the tune--he possesses a knack for distilling catchy melodic threads into tasty bite size nuggets. It's the kind of thing you might hear at a bar, then wonder later why that happy tune refuses to leave! "His Nibs" is classic Neil Cowley. Your memory must surrender!

Neil Cowley Trio
"His Nibs" (mp3)
from "Loud..Louder...Stop!"
(Candid Productions)

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