**** Hugh Ragin

AN AFTERNOON IN HARLEM

(Justin Time)

Hugh Ragin's new album is so accomplished, so open-hearted and generous, you have to wonder why it's been 15 years since he led a session. Ragin made a couple of albums on Cecma, an obscure Italian label; he's worked with Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, in the '80s, and more recently with David Murray, but this album refuses to be held to any label as confining as "avant-garde." His quartet, with Craig Taborn on piano, Jaribu Shahid on bass, and Bruce Cox on drums, and guests Murray, drummer Andrew Cyrille, and poet Amiri Baraka, share his vision, possessing the flexibility and versatility to play with equal conviction in all modes of expression.

The title track is a lyrical blues over a mellow groove that would sound at home on a classic '60s Blue Note album. "Not a Moment Too Soon" twists and sprints like any other flag-waving bebop anthem. "The Moors of Spain" straddles two worlds, using one section with chord changes and another without. Couched in Ragin's warm, bittersweet tone and innate sense of form and melody, the certifiably free-jazz numbers, "Braxton's Dues" and "Wisdom and Overstanding," sound like just another part of an African-American music continuum. Ragin's music thrives on the kind of creative freedom that really is beyond category.

-- Ed Hazell