Since winning the Thelonius Monk 1991 new jazz player's competition, Joshua Redman's career has been on fast-forward. His rise in popularity was propelled by a contract with Warner Brothers, his greatly noted graduation from Harvard, critical praise from the jazz press and collaborations with a long list of well-established players, most recently with Roy Haynes. He's rooted in bebop and has a straight-ahead sound that brings to mind plenty of influences, though surprisingly not his own father, Dewey Redman, a seminal avant-garde player. It would be easy to take a few critical shots at him for his quick rise to fame and belabor the irony of his being less cutting-edge than his father, but, in fact, he's a serious and satisfying saxophonist.
Last year, Redman released two fascinating CDs that merge his sax with drummer Brian Blade and keyboardist Sam Yahel. At first listen, they come across as a retro trio, but they reinvest standard arrangements with fresh energy and unique textures. "Yaya3" pays its debts to 1960s organ trios, with Yahel sticking to the Hammond B-3 and Blade pulling out funky bop rhythms all over the place. They mess around with the trio format on this album, but they take it a step further on the second release, "Elastic." This CD twists and stretches jazz idioms until they blend with pop, funk, rock and R & B. Strains of all those genres have always infused Redman's playing, but in a submerged way. Now that he has brought those influences out front, the music is a lot more fun and honest. On "Elastic" in particular, the trio blurs the line between composition and improvisation, and relishes their electric energy. Redman may someday return to the acoustic quartets of his earlier years, but the playfulness on these two CDs provides great pleasure in the interim. For a week of performances in Tokyo starting Monday, he will be backed by Yahel and one of the best young drummers around, Jeff Ballard.