Chris Potter - Underground

2006 CD release.

One of the elite saxophonists of his generation, Chris Potter continues to stretch musical boundaries .
A dynamic offering that strikes a provocative balance between composition and freewheeling improvisation, Underground showcases Potter’s remarkable chemistry with guitarist Wayne Krantz, keyboardist Craig Taborn and drummer Nate Smith, Chris’ bandmate in the Dave Holland Quintet.

Following the release of Lift (which featured keyboardist Kevin Hays, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Bill Stewart), Potter began experimenting with different personnel in his gigs at New York’s 55 Bar, an intimate Greenwich Village jazz club that has served as a kind of laboratory for a number of artists in the city. Ultimately, he hit on this winning combination of Krantz, Taborn and Smith. “I worked with a lot of different people until I ended up feeling like, ‘That’s the band,’” This potent unit of abundantly talented players was able to establish an all-important bandstand chemistry while on tour in Europe last year before finally going into the studio to record.

Throughout Underground, the quartet nimbly shifts gears from intensely aggressive unison passages and tightly executed contrapuntal lines, fueled by Smith’s power-precision backbeats, to more open-ended sections that allow for some adventurous stretching.