This is a wonderful CD featuring four pieces for saxophone quartet with clarinet. Commissioned by The Commission Project (Ned Corman, artistic director), the pieces each showcase the quartet with one of three guest soloists: Larry Combs, Paquito D'Rivera, and Ron Odrich. Though the instrumentation is nominally jazzy, and the music occasionally jazz inflected, these works belong firmly in the world of conservatory music. All are nearly through-composed, with improvisation limited largely to a few cadenzas.

Michael Holober's "Views From A Train" with Larry Combs on clarinet, is a strongly folk-inflected piece in four movements. It shifts easily from ruminative melancholy to chugging horn-driven rhythms and back. Combs has an especially polished, airy "classical" tone, shown to great effect. Simple repeating themes comvine to produce engaging polyphony throughout.

Gabriel Senanes' "Cubamericargie Quintet," featuring Paquito D'Rivera, is in three movements. It proceeds from the staccato, thythmic, tango-tinged "Sugar Reeds" to the charale-like "Somber Zamba," and ends with the delightful fugue, "My Long Allegro." The full-blown polyphony of the latter comes as a real surprise. It's a standout track thanks to the intricate exchange between the various reeds emerging from and then fading into the complex background.

Paquito and Franco D'Rivera's "Quasi An Arabesque." featuring Paquito D'Rivera, consists of one flowing, coyly whimsical movement. Less polyphonic than the other pieces, it's strongly thematic, with lots of catchy repretition and variation, and is especially tuneful.

Bernard Hoffer's "The Toy Chest," featuring Ron Odrich on clarinet, is an utterly charming evocation of the contents of said chest. Each of the five movements is dedicated to one toy. The music is seamless, and elicits a smile of astonished recognition, and even laughter, as the toy in questino is uncannily conjured up.

The American Saxophone Quartet's The Commission Project may not be jazz in the strictest sense, but it is terrific, and it'll make up for the deficiency of polyphony in most jazz libraries. Go buy it.

— Ethan Zames, Planet Jazz , Winter|Spring 2004, page 41

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