Opus 5 - Introducing Opus 5 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The powerful all-star quintet Opus 5 returns with Pentasonic, the follow-up to their muscular 2011 debut Introducing Opus 5. It's a can't-miss linup with tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake and trumpeter Alex Sipiagin in the front line, David Kikoski doubling on piano and Fender Rhodes, Boris Kozlov on bass, and Donald Edwards on drums. Once again Opus 5 puts original music by the band's members in the forefront,but the choice arrangements of Charlie Parker's seldom-heard Charlie's Wig and Freddie Hubbard's classic Red Clay bring unique and unexpected angles to the session. Moody and ethereal, rhythmically skewed, always furiously burning, this is music that lives up to the name of everyone involved.

With Swing On This, the all-star quintet Opus 5 presents it's fifth Criss Cross album, and first since 2015, when Criss-Cross released Tickle [Criss 1383), which itself was preceded - in backwards chronology - by Progression [Criss 1369], Pentasonic [Criss 1351], and Introducing Opus 5 [Criss 1339], each recorded a year apart. The Inchall starInch sobriquet is not an exaggeration - the collective discographies of trumpeter Alex Sipiagin, tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, pianist David Kikoski, bassist Boris Kozlov, and drummer Donald Edwards, all international first-callers, total more than 30 Criss Cross leader dates. The Album was recorded September 7, 2021 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in NY. Recording engineer Mike Marciano who also did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NY.

On it's third Criss Cross recording since they made their 2011 debut with Introducing Opus 5, Opus 5 - a collaborative quintet of New York A-listers Alex Sipiagin (trumpet) Seamus Blake (tenor sax), David Kikoski (piano and Fender Rhodes), Boris Kozlov (bass) and Donald Edwards (drums) - continues to uphold the high standards that it's steadily increasing fan base has come to expect. Building on multiple tours over the last three years, and simpatico developed over their mutually extended tenure in various units devoted to Charles Mingus' music, they play the evocative tunes - three by Edwards, two by Kozlov, and one apiece by Blake and Sipiagin. With the intelligence, creative abandon and cohesion, burnishing Opus 5's stature as 21st century inheritors and extenders of the legacy left by such predecessor quintets as Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis' units of the 1950s and 1960s is intact.