Right from the opening blast of horns and stealthy walking bass, Russ Johnson transports listeners to modern jazz at its peak, Eric Dolphy’s 1964 Out to Lunch. The opening tune, “Hat and Beard,” a musical portrait of Thelonious Monk, stakes common ground in startling interval leaps that wind player Dolphy and pianist Monk shared. Johnson, a Milwaukee trumpeter with a national reputation, dares to revisit the urbane lunch counter inhabited by Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Tony Williams. Johnson’s quintet, with pianist Myra Melford and saxophonist Roy Nathanson, forgoes reverent replication and goes for broke with the original material freshly arranged. Johnson and Nathanson’s horn voices interplay like close brothers sharing squabbling rivalry and terse love. They also find strange beauty in “Something Sweet, Something Tender.”
