*** Yusef Lateef

THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN EPIC SUITE

(Blue Jackyl)

Like Hannibal's African Portraits, this opus integrates the resources of a small jazz ensemble with those of a symphony orchestra. But Lateef departs from Hannibal's approach in utilizing orchestral textures from early modernism (Schoenberg? Webern? Ives?). This album is also a radical departure from Lateef's orchestrated, jazzy "new age" symphonies on the Atlantic label: it's harshly dramatic music full of nervous horn cries (both Lateef and saxman Ralph Jones sound like jungle tigers growling, ready to attack) and menacingly complex percussive polyrhythms.

The Middle Passage and the African-American history offer the structural latticework for jazz improvisation and orchestration. Not every one of the suite's 46 minutes held my attention, but there are numerous sublime fusions of storytellings in jazz and classical styles, enough to compel repeated listenings. And though this experiment won't satisfy conventional jazz fans who miss the bop-flavored Lateef of the 1960s, it's bound to please anyone who loves both jazz and Western classical traditions.

-- Norman Weinstein