Woody Shaw

One day at Vanguard Studios, New York, 7 January 1982. Woody Shaw on trumpet with the band he had by then been working with for a couple of years: Steve Turre on trombone, Mulgrew Miller on piano, Stafford James on bass, Tony Reedus on drums. Produced for Enja by Horst Weber and Matthias Winckelmann.

Shaw had come off a run of Columbia albums and was six weeks away from the Jazz Forum concerts that Elektra Musician would issue as Master of the Art and Night Music. This is the same quintet in the studio, and the programme is written from inside the band: Miller's Eastern Joy Dance opens, then James's Game, Turre's title tune, and two by Shaw, Rahsaan's Run and the eleven-minute Song of Songs.

Scott Yanow at AllMusic calls this one of Shaw's finest groups and reserves his highest praise for the leader on the three uptempo pieces. A reviewer on Amazon points to Miller's solo on Rahsaan's Run. Shaw died in 1989 at 44.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's Enja Real Jazz Classics series.