PAPATAMUS REDUX

ANALOG TONE FACTORY 001 (RECORDED JUNE 2022)

Saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh is a jazz environmentalist. What’s that, you might ask?
For starters, it is someone who does not waste a note. Rather than polluting the air with
extraneous flourishes and bravado, Sabbagh’s poetic and delicate tone embraces each selection with a sense of compassion and respect. As a jazz environmentalist, Sabbagh also chooses to recycle and refurbish jazz classics rather than preserving them or adding to the pile of unforgettable material that is on the market. Along with bassist Joe Martin and drummer Al Foster, Sabbagh’s commitment to jazz environmentalism is on full display with Heart. Listen to the trio’s totally unique approach to Duke Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss.” Sabbagh starts the melody with his familiar warm sound as Foster explores all the ways in which cymbals can punctuate the familiar song with perfect timing and creativity.  Foster’s magical drumming, along with Sabbagh’s “no stress” style, continues on Wayne Shorter’s “ESP,” the standard “Gone with the Wind” and Sabbagh’s should-be-a-standard, “Heart.”  The trio’s nice and easy, but never dull and boring, interpretations of Benny Carter’s “When Lights are Low” and “Body and Soul” are packed with musical moments that will make you stop, listen and smile. Heart also shows one more aspect of Sabbagh’s jazz environmentalism. This is his first release on his new label, Analog Tone Factory, which is committed to pure analog recordings with no edits or overdubs.

BOTTOM LINE: It takes guts for a saxophonist to play songs associated with Coleman Hawkins, Wayne Shorter, Benny Carter and Paul Desmond, but is takes talent and creativity to recraft those songs to make them your own. That’s exactly what Jerome Sabbagh does, with capable support from drummer Al Foster and bassist Joe Martin, on Heart.