Stanco's Time

4-STARS Anthony Stanco. Keep the name in mind, as you are likely to hear it mentioned soon enough as the most recent link in a chain of renowned bop trumpeters that started with Dizzy Gillespie and has numbered among its illustrious members Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Donald Byrd, Carmell Jones and a host of other luminaries. Now, after a lengthy period during which no one stepped forward to assume the mantle of bop trumpeter extraordinaire, and as this new album eagerly proclaims, it is Stanco's Time.

Hyperbole? An improbable and imprecise exaggeration? Perhaps. But please try not to form an opinion or reach a verdict before you hear what Stanco has to say. You may be surprised, and not unpleasantly so. While Stanco may not represent the second coming of Gillespie, Brown or Davis, he is a superb technician who has done his homework and formed an eloquent and clever vocabulary that often mirrors their unrivaled ingenuity and calls to mind their pivotal magnetism.

That is never more evident than on the session's swifter numbers, wherein echoes of Clifford Brown and the others can readily be discerned in Stanco's trim and articulate phrases. These include the opening "Showtime," Tadd Dameron's "Hot House," Gillespie's warp-speed "Dig," Stanco's "Worth the Time" and "Minor Time" (he wrote five numbers, four of whose titles include the word "time"). Stanco's quintet—Xavier Davis, piano; Randy Napoleon, guitar; Rodney Whitaker, bass; Joe Farnsworth, drums—is expanded on three of the last four tracks by tenor saxophonist Walter Blanding.

While everyone digs in hard, singly and as a unit, to ensure the album's success, Stanco remains its stylish and decisive nucleus, as he not only takes the lead on every number but enlivens them all with astute and meaningful solos. Even when sharing blowing space with Davis, Napoleon, Whitaker, Farnsworth or even Blanding, Stanco delivers the essential spark that amplifies and elevates the agenda. Even if he falls short of the mastery shown by his legendary precursors (and no one is conceding that he has), this is indeed Stanco's Time, and those who applaud and appreciate bop-centered jazz should use some of their own time to check him out.