Max Roach

In The Light is the quartet record Max Roach made at Barigozzi Studio in Milan on July 22 and 23, 1982, released by Soul Note in 1983. It is the band he led through those years, with Cecil Bridgewater on trumpet and flugelhorn, Odean Pope on tenor saxophone and Calvin Hill on bass: the same four had recorded Pictures In A Frame for Soul Note in Milan in September 1979 and Chattahoochee Red for Columbia in New York in 1980. Here the drummer turns largely to the bebop book he helped write.

Giovanni Bonandrini produced, Giancarlo Barigozzi engineered and Nat Hentoff wrote the liner notes. Two pieces are Roach's own, the eight-and-a-half-minute title track, which opens the record, and Henry Street Blues. Around them sit Thelonious Monk's Straight No Chaser and Ruby My Dear, Tadd Dameron's If You Could See Me Now and Good Bait, and Oscar Pettiford's Tricotism. Bridgewater sits out If You Could See Me Now, leaving the Dameron ballad to Pope and the rhythm section. On the 1979 session Pope had also played flute and oboe; here he stays on tenor throughout, and with no piano in the band the two horns and Hill's bass carry the harmony.

This is the Soul Note CD 121053-2, which Discogs lists as a reissue of the album first released on LP in 1983 as SN 1053.