Record date: July 25 and August 1, 1989
Mal Waldron playing in an intimate setting with a saxophone player. That mostly really turns out very well. The saxophone player must be very good. Is Chico any good? Yes he is! His works for ‘India Navigation’ in the 70’s are great. ‘Spirit Sensitive’ is one of my favorite albums from that decade. So nothing could go wrong? Well, almost nothing. This album is very much a mixed bag.
The starting ‘Battleground’ is one of the best compositions of the album. Opening with Mal’s dark chords and voicing, then comes in Chico Freeman with some great tenor playing. But he sounds a bit tempered or something. I expected a little more fire from him. It’s Mal that is truly shining here with his nervous and dark chords in the background trying to push Chico into new directions. It still sounds like Chico is playing with the breaks on. Then on the second track there’s Tiziana again. As I already mentioned: she is not a bad singer. But following the quite fiery Battleground this really is a bummer. It all collapses into a very tame and smooth jazz ballad. On ‘Tyrolean Waltz’ Chico has some chance to show off his excellent saxophone skills. Can’t say a bad word on that as his control over the instrument is excellent. I once heard somebody say he can’t play. Well I ain’t no expert in saxophone techniques but he sounds fine to me. Also there is Rocky Knauers first appearance here (misspelled as Ricky). Rocky was with Mal in Klaus Weiss’ band. He is an excellent bassist that is most known for his affiliation with Chet Baker.
The remaining tracks aren’t making much of a difference. The exception is probably the title track with Chico, Mal and a more dominant Knauer. Here there are some signs of chemistry between the musicians and Chico’s playing sounds more inspired. He’s a little more on fire here. It has a nice funky vibe and this final track pushes my rating from 3 stars to a nice 3.5.
Definitely not a punishment listening to it but both Chico and Mal did way better. Maybe it just did not work out between them. I miss a bit of chemistry between them. They played again on a later occasion with drummer Sangoma Everett. What I can reveal is that there it also doesn’t really work out very well. Most of Mal’s stuff was brought out on Soul Note, but this one on sister label Black Saint which mostly represented the more freejazz oriented recordings. This recording is not really 'free', it’s pretty accessible. A record that contains some nice playing but fails to really impress.
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