Lake Superior

When the members of an ensemble sacrifice all selfish thought and throw their entire weight behind the compositions of others, it's a transcendent moment, almost spiritual. There is a sense of a something greater than the sum of the individual parts when an ensemble serves the purposes of the soloist, while that soloist, simultaneously, plays his heart out in honor of the ensemble. Tunnel Six, six young jazzers who originate from across the U.S. and Canada and only came to meet at a music workshop in Banff, have created an album of these moments. Melodies that dare to be epic, jazz compositions that stretch out to the fringes of the genre, and a cohesion and selflessness that would indicate a collaborative period measured in years, not months, and Lake Superior is only the sextet's debut album.