Ken Wiley's Jazz Horn Redux
Ken Wiley's new album is so surprising. He's a french horn player, which obviously sounds a lot more mellow than a trumpet or a flugelhorn or a sax or a trombone. Wiley is celebrating the contribution of horns in the jazz songbook, so we get smooth and textured renderings of such classics as Freddie Hubbard's "Little Sunflower," Charlie Parker's "Scrapple from the Apple," John Coltrane's "Equinox" and Sonny Rollins' "Oleo." You even get two faithful covers from Kind of Blue--"All Blues" and "Freddie Freeloader."