Codebook

Rudresh Mahanthappa

Rudresh Mahanthappa

Since the release of Mother Tongue in 2004, Rudresh Mahanthappa has moved to the forefront of the new generation of composers and saxophonists in jazz. The time in between has seen him take honors in the DownBeat Jazz Critics Poll, receive the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for excellence in composition and receive a Rockefeller grant to compose music for his Dakshina Ensemble featuring Kadri Gopalanath amongst other things. It also provided Rudresh time to begin work on his next CD. The result is Codebook, featuring Rudresh’s working quartet of Vijay Iyer (p), Francois Moutin (b) and Dan Weiss (d). Upon first listen, the recording makes an immediate impression as a mature work filled with information, the result of Rudresh’s consistently evolving dialect and musical direction. Impressive as that may be, and those who have heard Rudresh before can attest to how impressive that is, more striking is the ease of this music and the tasteful restraint that is evident throughout. This could have easily been like so many other CDs by alto players running 16th notes for 45 minutes straight. Instead the music is filled with a controlled power and the confidence of a player who knows how to say something significant without drawing on every tool he has at every moment.