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THE QUENTIN COLLINS/BRANDON ALLEN QUARTET
What's It Gonna Be?
(Sunlightsquare Records)
*****
This talented quartet get the full five stars, not only for performing brilliantly here but also for playing the type of jazz few can master - namely bright, tuneful neo-bop originals that swing from start to finish. Confident and cosmopolitan, Aussie tenorman Allen, Italian drummer Enzo Zirilli and two Brits, trumpeter Collins and Hammond organist Ross Stanley, make guest trombonist Trevor Mires and singer Natalie Williams feel completely at home. The co-leaders evoke their Blue Note heroes - Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Hank Mobley, Sonny Rollins - without copying a single lick, and the rhythm section is as tight as Sir Alex Ferguson's lips whenever Ryan Giggs is mentioned.
JACK MASSARIK - (Evening Standard, 27 May 2011) |
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QUENTIN COLLINS
"If Not Now Then When"
(Sunlightsquare Records)
With jazz courses turning out bebop trumpeters by the busload, the arrival of a new contender can still be interesting news for the live jazz circuit, often less so for the recorded one. Young brass virtuoso Quentin Collins - sometimes heard with Michael Garrick, but most often in recent times with former rock drummer Dylan Howe's jazz quintet - likes the bop trumpet legend Booker Little and Mingus Big Band sideman Alex Sipiagin. Little's harmonic adventurousness and Sipiagin's rich tone can both be heard in Collins' sound on this vigorous set. Tommy Smith's brutally powerful drummer Alyn Cosker constantly ignites the music, the vibraphonist Jim Hart moves between a guitar-like sound and a traditionally delicate vibes glimmer, while guest saxophonist Tony Kofi brings his vinegary tone and nervy agility to pieces by Monk and Coltrane. Faure's Pavane is a slightly overblown exercise in jazz/classical bravura, but Monk's Four in One has both fiery Kofi and a stealthily insinuating Hart, and Cosker's power lifts Collins' Sly Street way out of the rut of the mid-tempo Latin-jazz groover.
JOHN FORDHAM, The Guardian (13 April 2007)
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