Adam Kolker: Reflections

Saxophonist Adam Kolker has assembled something of a dream band for his album Reflections. Guitarist John Abercrombie and pianist Russ Lossing team up with Kolker’s core trio including John Hebert and Billy Mintz. When considering how so many of the guest musicians contributed songs to the album–Kolker gets credit for only two numbers–it’s strange to find the music to be such an easy-peasy affair. It’s almost too consistent. Quiet introspection works wonders by creating beautiful patterns in the Tom Jones/Harvey Schmidt cover “Soon It’s Gonna Rain”. Apart from the crazy bop of “Boscarob”, Reflections is afraid to wake the baby. Listening to Lossing’s eight-minute Central-Park-in-autumn original, “Song Along The Way”, it’s hard to believe this is the same dude responsible for Metal Rat. However, comfort was important to Kolker this time around. As he states it, recording with friends “would be the easiest, most natural thing in the world. And it was.”