Autumn Moonlight

Although Avery Sharpe has a long list of impressive credits as a sideman, the veteran bassist's catalog as a leader isn't nearly as large as his admirers would like it to be. Many of the heavyweights Sharpe has backed over the years (including McCoy Tyner and Archie Shepp) have much larger catalogs. Regardless, Sharpe has provided some fine albums as a leader along the way, and Autumn Moonlight is nothing to complain about. Recorded in 2008, this solid post-bop outing finds Sharpe forming an acoustic trio with pianist Onaje Allan Gumbs and drummer Winard Harper. Straight-ahead jazz dates often emphasize standards — perhaps Tin Pan Alley standards, perhaps hard bop standards, perhaps post-bop standards — but Autumn Moonlight doesn't take the "jazz as repertory music" approach. Instead, Sharpe's own compositions dominate the 59-minute CD, and the lyrical Gumbs contributed two pieces as well. The only songs on Autumn Moonlight that weren't written by either Sharpe or Gumbs are trumpeter Woody Shaw's "Organ Grinder" and James Taylor's "Fire and Rain," which works perfectly well in a post-bop setting. Sharpe and his colleagues don't offer a lame note-for-note cover of "Fire and Rain" or approach the soft rock/adult contemporary favorite as elevator music the way that so many smooth jazz automatons would; instead, they improvise enthusiastically and provide an interpretation that has a serious acoustic jazz perspective. Autumn Moonlight isn't quite as essential as the excellent Legends and Mentors album that Sharpe recorded in 2007; even so, it's a rewarding effort that finds him on top of his game as both an upright bassist and a composer.