In the coronagraph-plagued year 2021, reed player Dick de Graaf celebrated his 40th anniversary with the album
Festive. A beautifully designed CD/LP featuring a retrospective of his prominence in Dutch jazz over the last four decades. However, it contained only new music by his quartet; atmospheric post-bop and European jazz with a starring role for De Graaf's sound that is as warm as it is powerful.
Successor Lifeline continues that line. In recent decades, De Graaf, like many of his contemporaries, eagerly fiddled with world music, classical, rock and tango, among other things. As a fledgling seventy-something, he is back to jazz, including odes to Mingus (with a version of his Goodbye Pork Pie Hat) and Ellington (Duke Ellington's Sound Of Love). Bach briefly peeks around the corner in Past Into Present, with De Graaf on flute. It's a (less successful) outlier on an album that mostly exudes pure jazz, with plenty of enjoyable sax playing by De Graaf. (MR)more
