With Folk Art, his 21st recording for Blue Note, Joe Lovano debuts Us Five, a dynamic new ensemble and one of the most exciting of his acclaimed career that collectively breathes a youthful exuberance into the firstever Lovano album to be comprised entirely of his own original compositions. Recorded in November after a preparatory week at New York’s famed Village Vanguard, Lovano presents a collection of nine original compositions for himself on tenor saxophone, straight alto saxophone, alto clarinet, tarogato, aulochrome, and percussion; James Weidman on piano; Esperanza Spalding on bass; and Otis Brown III and Francisco Mela on—as Lovano likes to put it—drums and cymbals. He explores a wide spectrum of “colors, sounds, and feelings,” organizing the flow into passages for quintet, quartets, trios, duos, and solos within the unit, exploiting to the fullest the various rhythm section possibilities afforded by the two-drummer format.
