Live Beauty

...and surely here there is beauty! I've been listening to John's wonderful guitar ever since I moved to the Pacific Northwest (way back in 1980), but this is the first time I've reviewed an album with his playing on it. The excellent opener, "In The Park", brings back mem'ries of some of the great work John did with bassist David Friesen, but Michael's reed work lends a totally different atmosphere to the song. John Shifflett does bass and Jason Lewis does drums to round out one of the best jazz quartets you'll hear in 2015 (or at any other time, actually). It was the 9:04 "Cookie Monster Blue" that turned out to be my personal favorite of the seven (long) tunes offered up... bluesy, yet still full of real life! I give John and the rest of his fantastic quartet a MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, with an "EQ" (energy quotient) rating of 4.98.