Wheeler Curtis, Caleb
Imani, 2024, CD
Instrument: Saxophone
Issue: 31.1
Jazz Ruler Type: Bebop
Performance: 3
Sound: 4
Score: 74
O’s Notes: The True Story of Bears and the Invention of the Battery is a double album by Caleb Wheeler Curtis playing hard bop with two different trios. The first disc, Bears and the Invention… features Wheeler Curtis on sax and trumpet with bassist Sean Conly and Michael Sarin on drums. All these songs are originals. Highlights here are “Stellar Ray, See?”, “Empires”, and “Odessa”, a solo sax effort. The second disc, Raise Four: Monk the Minimalist features Wheeler Curtis (t, sax), Eric Revis (b) and Justin Faulkner (d). This was more easily embraceable as we identified with the Monk compositions, notably “Introspection”, “Reflections”, and “Jackie-ing”. We couldn’t make sense of the title, but we enjoyed the contrasting discs and abundance of creativity.
Publicist: Braithwaite & Katz
