From
Jazzwise – Lockdown Solos – Editors Choice
Trevor
Watts shows his jazz roots are still a major part of his playing as he storms
through this powerful set of solo pieces that were recorded during his period
of lockdown. As the Covid-19 virus raged outside, Watts’ response was to return
to the music that originally prompted him to pick up his saxophone – and just
blow his isolation blues away. Made up of eight separate solos for alto and
soprano sax (each tagged with the title ‘I so elated’….geddit?), the exercise
rekindles his love of bebop and modern jazz forms, as well as pushing his
instinctive need to improvise to the fore. Despite his forced confinement, Watts
is in exceptionally fine voice here, letting loose warm gusts of trilling notes
that echo with the possible inspiration of an amplified dawn chorus. The
Lockdown Solos is a timely message of musical freedom with a reverberation that
will last longer than the pandemic that caused it to happen.
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