Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Braggtown, the new album by the Branford Marsalis Quartet, opens with a full-on blitz called “Jack Baker,” and even though Marsalis has his own distinctive sound, the remarkable performance evokes the classic John Coltrane Quartet as well as humanly possible. A couple of years ago the band — drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, bassist Eric Revis, and pianist Joey Calderazzo, who’ve been a steady unit since 1997 — released an explosive reading of Trane’s A Love Supreme. The whole album. Come on, I thought, let’s move on to something else. The new record does exactly that. It’s the group’s finest moment, an astonishing example of a band working at the highest level as a single organism. There might not be a better working outfit in mainstream jazz.
The Branford Marsalis Quartet performs tonight, Friday, October 13, at Symphony Center at 8 PM.
