*** Sabir Mateen Trio

DIVINE MAD LOVE

(Eremite)

Multi-instrumentalist Sabir Mateen's first recording as a leader is a free-jazz outing of emotional power and formal complexity. Mateen is no fresh-faced kid: he's one of those free-jazz virtuosos who has labored long in obscurity. The hard work is evident in his equal facility on tenor and alto saxophones, clarinet, and flute. He moves from the soft, woody texture of his clarinet to the hard, full-bodied agility of his flute to the plaintive human cry of his alto on "Checking in with Yourself," a pensive performance of surprising delicacy. "Conver-sation/Lunch Before Departure" features Mateen's rougher tenor in a solo filled with altissimo spikes and troughs of long, coiling lines of low notes. On "Running into the Truth (after Chasing a Lie)" the singing tone of his alto (perhaps his best instrument) adds a vulnerable human quality to one of the tighter solos on the album. The music is spontaneous, as is the interaction among Mateen and his mercurial bandmates, Bostonians John Voigt on bass and Laurence Cook on drums. But each tune is focused and tells its own story with economy, power, grace, and clarity.

-- Ed Hazell