Album Review: Mosaic by Nicole McCabe

Nicole McCabe is a saxophonist and composer from the San Francisco Bay Area but is now resident in Southern California where she is a Lecturer and Jazz Ensemble Director at Loyola Marymount University. She has recently released her fourth album, Mosaic, on Ghost Note Records.

For this project, McCabe has assembled a fine group of musicians comprising her long-established collaborator, Logan Kane (bass), Tim Angulo (drums) and Julius Rodriguez (keys). Jon Hatamiya (trombone), Aaron Janik (trumpet) and Jeff Parker (guitar) contribute to selected tracks.  The album was produced by Jeff Parker.

Previously, I had not encountered Ms. McCabe and had no expectations (meaning I was neutral) from this offering. However, from the opening bars of the first track Force of Good, I started to form a very positive opinion. The piano attack serves as a great structure to support McCabe’s beautifully phrased sonorous sax and the song has a nice retro fusion feel. The final track, Derecske, named after a village in Hungary (which, curiously, this reviewer has visited) has a very similar form to the first track typified by a vigorous piano riff. I’m tempted to speculate that these first and last songs serve as bookends for the six other tracks on the album.  In anycase, the intervening tracks (2-7) comprise a collection of well-crafted compositions.  I particularly enjoyed Tight Grip, a languid reflective piece and showcasing Jeff Parker’s guitar that intersects pleasingly with McCabe’s alto.  Walking Statue has a nicely phrased, breathy, sax intro but then picks up the pace with some nice piano from Rodriguez.

Overall, this is a very solid offering from an emerging artist.  The album contains numerous nods to the giants of jazz ancestry and references to John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock are evident.  As such it is very much classical “American” jazz  – I say this to differentiate it from contemporary European works. Overall this is a very enjoyable, solid, offering from an emerging artist and listening is highly recommended.

John Morrow