It's time for a CD review!

This is a disk where I clearly remember why I bought it and from whom. I bought this after reading an online review from the New York Times. The article highlighted some overlooked Grammy Award nominees. I also bought this online from Amazon.com. We've seen so many brick-and-mortar music stores shut down that it's getting easier and easier to buy on the web. I used to have one of the best music stores in town a couple blocks from my house; now, they've moved to another part of the city and I'm buying more and more online.

Absolute Quintet, by Dafnis Prieto is a jazz quintet affair with an unusual instrumentation by traditional standards: drums, piano, cello, violin, and saxophone. We hear a lot of terminology in music discussions, and I may have mentioned this before, but I oppose genre labels as difficult to manage and just plain stupid. So, if I engage in a little of that stupidity, I'll say that this group indulges in a fair amount of latin jazz while also dabbling i what some writers call "chamber jazz". If you accept the idea that chamber jazz is an idea and not a genre, then we can accuse this band of that crime. And what I mean by that term is a form of jazz that emphasizes the traditional sounds, structures and rhythms of jazz, but where jazz since the late 1940s has emphasized improvisation, chamber jazz emphasizes written arrangements and less spontaneity--even for small groups like this.

Like a lot of chamber jazz-influenced acts, the approach gives Mr. Prieto's combo a fairly airless feel, as if the life was squeezed out of the band by the complex arrangements and tunes. When the group is allowed some blowing room, Yosvany Terry, the saxophonist on all but one track, brings up some fire, but this group seems to spend more time thinking than swinging. Pianist Jason Lindner also brings up some nice work when he gets the room, but Prieto's fascination with intricate rhythms just squeezes every idea into a straitjacket of overly complex and shifty underpinnings. Still, the playing is always gorgeous and the tunes are lovely, taking full advantage of the rich sound of double-stopped stringed instruments to make the band sound much bigger than you'd expect. The disk is pleasant enough, but hardly seems worth a Grammy nomination.

5 out of 10.

CDs listened to today:

• My Morning Jacket: Z
• Olivier Messiaen: 8 Preludes
• Sam Phillips: Cruel Inventions
• Jesus Guridi: Sinfonia Pirenaica