The Path

Paul Ricci is a wonderful player — not pyrotechnic, supremely tasteful, rhythmically and harmonically adept, with a warm, clean tone that makes The Path a beauty to listen to. Finished in stages across many years, the album features electric bass maestro Anthony Jackson, who has since passed — so rock-solid and distinctively creative on everything he touched. His presence and that of drummer Steve Jordan and percussionist Manolo Badrena calls to mind Steve Khan's group Eyewitness. Pat Martino's Joyous Lake and Larry Coryell's Eleventh House also sprung to mind while listening. (Randy Brecker, an Eleventh House member way back, makes a trumpet cameo on "September Glide.")

"Major Look" and "Whenever" make for a particularly strong one-two opener, both featuring the Eyewitness gang with Michael Wolff on keyboards. "Lobo" brings on Malian vocalist Abdoulaye Diabaté and a different cast (still with Anthony Jackson), and a more overdriven Ricci working up to a snarling slide solo. "Sleeping Beauty" is sparser in instrumentation but full and rich thanks to André Mehmari on Rhodes, Ricci on nylon-string and Rogerio Boccato on percussion. The closing Ricci/Boccato duet "Down on 6th Street" is another tasty, scaled-down affair that balances the busier band numbers. The Afro-Latin, Brazilian, West African and jazz fusion elements are strong, as is Ricci's musical personality, the thing that comes across the most.