After a run of ECM albums that set his saxophones against church organ, strings, brass ensemble and choir, Brewster's Rooster finds John Surman back in a plain jazz quartet. Recorded in New York with John Abercrombie, Drew Gress and Jack DeJohnette, it mixes soulful ballads, hard-driving uptempo tunes and fiery improvisation, with the baritone saxophone as the leading voice.
The band rests on long friendships. Surman first met DeJohnette at a jam session at Ronnie Scott's in 1968, when the drummer was in London with Bill Evans. In 1974 Surman played with DeJohnette's Directions group, which included Abercrombie. Surman and DeJohnette later made the duo albums The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon and Invisible Nature for ECM. Abercrombie and DeJohnette had played together since the early 1970s, two thirds of the trio Gateway. Gress, making his ECM debut, came from bands led by Tim Berne, Fred Hersch and Ravi Coltrane. The session took place in September 2007 at Avatar Studios, engineered by Joe Ferla and mixed in June 2008 at Legacy Studios, with Manfred Eicher as executive producer.
Seven of the nine pieces are Surman originals. The other two are Billy Strayhorn's ballad Chelsea Bridge and the opener Slanted Sky by John Warren, Surman's partner in The Brass Project. It is one of only two tracks on soprano. The baritone carries most of the album, from the Latin-tinged lift of Hilltop Dancer to the title track, where DeJohnette lays down a funky backbeat. Counter Measures, at nearly eleven minutes the longest piece, brings back the soprano and leaves room for every player to solo. Going for a Burton closes the set at a boppish pace.
In The Guardian, John Fordham called it "Surman's loosest and jazziest album in years", adding that DeJohnette "seems to be in the midst of a polyrhythmic renaissance". Duncan Heining wrote in Jazzwise that few players can make the baritone skip and caper as Surman does. Geoffrey Himes of The Washington Post placed the core of the record in the dialogue between Surman's percussive low notes and a drummer who looks for melody on the drumheads.
CD edition, ECM 2046, first released in June 2009.
