John Lindberg

The Catbird Sings is a quartet album by bassist John Lindberg, credited to the John Lindberg Ensemble, with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, saxophonist Larry Ochs and drummer Andrew Cyrille. It was recorded in Milan in April 1999 and released by Black Saint in 2000. Lindberg wrote most of the nine pieces, and two covers point to the bass tradition behind them. Ascendant is by Jimmy Garrison, Nostalgia In Times Square by Charles Mingus, and Hydrofoil is dedicated to the bassist Fred Hopkins.

The session took place on April 12 and 13, 1999 at Mu Rec Studio in Milan, with Paolo Falascone as recording engineer and Lindberg as producer. Ted Panken wrote the liner notes, and the cover painting is by Laurie Lindberg. Ochs and Smith already knew each other's playing: a year earlier, in March 1998, Smith had recorded with Ochs's trio What We Live in Albuquerque for the Black Saint album Trumpets. The pieces vary a good deal in length and shape. Float-ing Fanfare opens the disc in under five minutes, Waltz Four and Area 6 are short, and Ground Multiple runs nine and a half. After the short Sophie's Lullaby, the title track closes the album at nearly sixteen minutes. The Free Jazz Collective, reviewing it in 2008, gave it four stars. It praised the mix of slow, meditative pieces, bop-inflected tunes and freer passages, noted that not every track uses all four players, and found it less unified than Lindberg's later records.

This is the Black Saint CD 120198-2, the album's original 2000 release.