New Release: Waking Dream from Randy Napoleon
Label: OA2 Records
Release Date: August 15, 2025
Website: www.RandyNapoleon.com
An amalgam of modern bebop, meditative blues, and straight-ahead jazz, composer, guitarist, and leader Randy Napoleon teamed up with four additional guitarists, who are all former students of his: Luke Sittard, Chris Minami, Jocelyn Gould, and Ben Turner for his recording Waking Dream. Consisting of original tracks written by Napoleon and Gregg Hill, the recording explores diversity in syncopation, melodic phrasing, and harmonic forms. The atmospheric serenity shrouding the title track exudes a tenderness, which is contrasted by the complex intricacies of "The Speckled Frog," as each instrument moves to a different beat between Quincy Davis' syncopated drumming to the streaking flare of Anthony Stanco's trumpet and the curt bopping pulse of Rodney Whitaker's bass. "The Singer" displays a Latin accent in the rumba-like phrasing of the guitar riffs and ruminating sway of Langston Kitchen's bass, while the sleek pulsation of the guitar strings draping "52 Pickup" produce a mollifying ambience, pierced by incisions of Davis's rumbling drums. Michael Dease's billowing trombone in "Riverside Blossoms" adds a complementing texture to the lounging stance of the melodic strokes, and Walter Blanding's tenor saxophone perforates "Boom Boom" with a bebop swagger. Each track has its own characteristics and structure, exhibiting Napoleon's flexibility and openness as a composer, arranger, performer, and leader.
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