Hometown

On his third album for Seattle-based Origin Records, Northwest trumpet player Jared Hall celebrates his return to Spokane, the Eastern Washington city where he grew up and for the past four years has served as Whitworth University's director of jazz studies. Hall plays with immaculate command, has a gorgeous tone in all the registers and creates shapely solos. He and bassist Michael Glynn stand above their bandmates in that department, though tenor saxophonist Troy comRoberts occasionally catches fire. Hall puts his ear for fetching melodies to good use for five of the seven tunes on this textbook exemplum of classic hard-bop.

Framed by foot-tapping piano riffs, the infectious title track and "Family Groove" could easily have come from the pen of Horace Silver; "Step By Step" would have sounded right at home at California's Lighthouse. The hard-driving "Room 111," propelled by Glynn's agile walking bass, edges toward fiery Coltrane and McCoy, and Glynn shines as a soloist on the jaunty Bobby Hutcherson waltz "Little B's Poem," a smart pick. Monk's "Ask Me Now" gets the quick waltz treatment on solos. The Latin-tinged "Echoes And Origins" doesn't quite lock in and reprising the title tune as a closer feels a bit cute.

But pretty much everything is in its proper place here, which is both the strength and the weakness of a textbook-perfect album. For while Hall's homecoming message comes through, there's something academic about this affair that makes it feel more like well-made craft that affective art.