The Bright Side

Though he hasn’t caught fire like some of his tenor sax peers (including Chris Potter, Donny McCaslin, Joshua Redman, and JD Allen), Joel Frahm stands right alongside them, revered for his technical and vernacular mastery and soulful personality on the horn. He gained greater exposure with *Don’t Explain*, a 2004 duo release with his West Hartford, Connecticut high school buddy Brad Mehldau. (His 2017 duo outing with German pianist Johannes Mössinger, *New by Two*, is an inspired bookend.) Amid many guest appearances and some co-led projects, his output as a leader, though consistently strong, has been relatively sparse. *The Bright Side* is, therefore, a pinch-yourself kind of album in that it showcases Frahm in the studio, fully in the spotlight in a bare-bones trio with bassist Dan Loomis and drummer Ernesto Cervini. There’s no chordal backing instrument, meaning that Frahm can take off in many directions, and does, with the enthusiastic participation and prompting of his bandmates. The date is all original as well, with tunes mostly by Frahm but also two by Loomis (“Silk Road” and “X Friends”) and one by Cervini (“The Beautiful Mystery”). Quite simply, it’s the Frahm record his admirers were waiting for, a sustained reckoning with the art and legacy of the tenor trio — leading off, appropriately, with an homage to one of its greatest exponents, the late Joe Henderson (“Blow Poppa Joe,” based on Henderson’s “Inner Urge”).