The Village Vanguard in New York has long been jazz's sanctum sanctorum, a sacred space where jazz secrets were revealed nightly to the faithful. A list of players showcased at the club since the 1950s would form a musical family tree. Classic recordings there by John Coltrane, Bill Evans and Art Pepper, among others, drew on the dedication of the crowd's attentions to drive players to improvise at their peaks. So, recording live at the club has always been both a daunting and reverential undertaking.
Not so for Tom Harrell. The trumpeter has made a name for himself by seriously exploring jazz's mysterious inner workings. A series of excellent CDs over the last 12 years have found him soloing over hard-driving bands of different configurations, including chamber-like string sections, but none until now attempted to capture his spot-on tone and articulate soloing in a live setting. "Live at the Village Vanguard" gets it down right.
Along with Bud Powell, Harrell is one of the few jazz players to be consistently productive despite his schizophrenia, which he was diagnosed with in the late '60s when he joined Stan Kenton's band. The list of famous bandleaders who requested his trumpeting since that time reads like a jazz history chart: Kenton, Evans, Woody Herman, Horace Silver, Mel Lewis and longtime associate Phil Woods. Harrell's work with Woods' bop-devoted groups seemed like it would be hard to outdo, but this live outing demonstrates that the trumpeter's talents at playing, composing and arranging are still on the upswing.