Every few years someone asks "where are the new jazz musicians coming from?" The aging of what is seen as jazz's last great crop of performers is a matter of concern for everyone who loves jazz and wants to see it continue to be performed. Ken Burns' Jazz, along with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, pretty much declared that jazz was dead as far back as 1970, maybe even the mid-sixties. Take a look at the tenor saxophone, some argue. Who's left? Sonny Rollins, Johnny Griffin, Illinois Jacquet, Harold Land, and a handful of others are our only link back to Dex, Trane, Prez, and Hawk. Or are they? The work of Eric Alexander and Chris Potter, not to mention their most current CDs, suggest that there are younger musicians out there who are listening carefully to their predecessors, who play and relate to the older group of jazz artists still out there, and who are developing their own voices slowly and painstakingly, the same way previous generations of artists did. I am a lot more hopeful about the future of jazz and one of its most important instruments when I examine the work and careers of these two artists. Oh, and that thing about jazz being dead back in 1970? It merely demonstrates how inflexible and ready to assign jazz a place in distant history some folks are.

Chris Potter was born in 1971 in Chicago, though his family relocated to South Carolina when he was still an infant. Growing up in a household where music by Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck was often played, Chris began playing the piano. Later he picked up saxophone, and through high school learned to play sporano, alto, and tenor sax, as well as bass clarinet and alto flute. He moved to New York at age 18 to study at the Manhattan School of Music. There he met pianist Kenny Werner, who was one of his teachers and who became a good friend. He played in trumpeter Red Rodney's band, becoming a featured player in the group though he was still a student. Potter has worked with a number of high-profile names in the jazz world, including Paul Motian, Jim Hall, James Moody, Steve Swallow, and Larry Carlton.

Potter is a regular member of Dave Holland's quintet, a group that has garnered a great deal of attention from both jazz critics and fans. This past year he won the tenor sax category in Down Beat's International Critics Poll as an Artist Deverving of Wider Recognition. He also contributed his energetic, twisting sound to Steely Dan's GRAMMY award-winning album Two Against Nature. Listen to the tenor work on the title track, with its Monkish angularity and you'll quickly hear why Potter is a well-respected saxophonist whether he's playing pop, jazz, funk, or anything else.

Potter's latest CD, Gratitude, demonstrates his ability to fuse the past and present. Here he demonstrates that he knows the cornerstones on which his playing is based, but is capable of developing his own voice even while showing respect for the great players of the past and present. He has composed nine of the tracks on the album, and though he summons the spirits of the great players who have gone before him, it is completely a Chris Potter recording from beginning to end. In Potter's own words: "...there are enough instances of people writing a tune and saying, ‘Okay, let’s try to play like John Coltrane’s quartet on this.’ I didn’t want to do that at all because it’s been done so many times. While I’m influenced by all these musicians and do feel a strong debt to them in a certain way, I feel the way to really honor them is not to try to sound like them or not sound like them. I tried to just be me, expressing gratitude to them, but not necessarily emulating their styles."

On "The Source", a piece for John Coltrane, the harmonic landscape is very much that of Trane, but the beat of the piece is different, a bit more New Orleans-inspired than anything you've heard Coltrane play. "Sun King" utilizes a calypso beat and one of those simple, "St. Thomas"-like melodies and chord progressions that can wreak havoc on a less-than-inspired player. Key here is that Potter understands Rollins' use of rhythm as a key developmental feature of his solos. However, Potter's playing is much less muscular than Rollins' would be on a piece like this. "High Noon", a tribute to Eddie Harris, breaks out a funky, Meters-inspired groove and lets Kevin Hays loose on Fender Rhodes, not to mention Potter's fat bass clarinet line that pumps the piece up nicely.

Potter's band contributes much to the atmosphere of each track, and they themselves manage to steer clear of trying to play like someone else. Brian Blade's drum work seems straightforward until you begin to listen to some of the tracks and hear how he really gets into some of the second-line rhythms. Hays is an able keyboard player whose percussive attack on the Fender Rhodes keeps the instrument from realizing some of its worst lounge-sound tendencies. Add to this the steadiness of Scott Colley's bass contributions, and you've got a group that cooks on every style represented on this recording, no small feat.

Potter demonstrates some real cleverness in his work on the songs he didn't write. Let's face it, no matter what you do, if you play "Body and Soul" on saxophone you're going to elicit comparisons with Coleman Hawkins. What's the point of that? Instead, Potter gives us a bass clarinet rendition that is beautiful in itself even as it makes us remember Hawkins' awesome work on that recording. Potter does his only alto work on the album on "Star Eyes", which he reveals to be one of his favorite Charlie Parker recordings. I can certainly understand that, since it happens to be one of mine as well. The group works the famous bass line intro into 7/4 time, giving the piece a twist while keeping it very much in the bop tradition. Scott Colley takes a really nice bass solo as well.

The album concludes with a solo tenor version of the classic "What's New" that Potter sums up as follows: "After examining the rich history of this instrument, it's easy to wonder in despair, what is really new that hasn't been done? I don't know, but I do believe that one thing all the greats have is the courage to tell their own story their own way using the influences around them at the time--this seems to me the truest way to honor this tradition." I heartily agree.

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