Malicool

And now, free jazz's greatest trombonist, Roswell Rudd, has created another masterpiece. His horn--wide-bore and fatly swaying blats--mixes magically with Toumani Diabate's kora, Lassana Diabate's balofon, and Basseko Kouyate's ngona to make a wonderland of strings, percussion, and resonant color. Sayon Sissoko's guitar and Henry Schroy's bass lend a structural foundation over which the marimbalike plunks dance and Rudd's horn pliably fills space with broad, full-blown clouds, an ideal, unexpected expander of all that's going on around the trombonist. Monk's "Jackie-ing" has a structure that Toumani's kora thrives in, with canyons where the strings make a phenomenal, rich showing. It's the more traditional stuff that has Rudd thriving, always with such sureness that he sounds as if he's played Malian music all his life. But still: you won't believe the adaptation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony's "Ode to Joy" as it forms the launch pad for the set-closing "Malijam." --Andrew Bartlett