Without a Trace

Like the legendary Gil Evans [1912-1988] who more than anybody helped Miles Davis become a super-duper star by outfitting the trumpeter with his celestial arrangements, the music of Scott Reeves goes through the kind of changes wherein it starts off as one animal buts ends up another. Without A Trace (Origin Records) by The Scott Reeves Jazz Orchestra, a 17-piece post-swing post-bop monster band, is filled with the syncopated alacrity of avant-swing, or what he calls "swinging dissonance."

His trombone is but the tip is a gigantic iceberg. His compositions and how he uses each instrument for specific purposes a la Ellington take the music "away from the typical harmonic palette," as he also says. Steely Dan's road vocalist Carolyn Leonhart shines on the original title track but it's the covers of Kurt Weill's "Speak Low" and the Frank Sinatra hit "All Or Nothing At All" (both from 1943) plus Wayne Shorter's 1965 "Juju" that prove to be the highlights.