Polyhedric

During a 1961 trek to Italy to perform at the annual San Remo Jazz Festival, Buddy Collette detoured to Milan long enough to record The Polyhedric, a superb if virtually unknown session that fuses the saxophonist's angular West Coast sensibilities with the more straight-ahead approach then dominant among the postwar European jazz cognoscenti. Paired with trumpeter Dusko Goykovich, pianist Renato Sellani, trombonist Dino Piana, tenorist Gianni Basso, guitarist Franco Cerri, and drummer Jimmy Pratt, Collette turns in a focused, fiery performance; even more impressive, he wrote the vast majority of this music, proving himself a challenging, inventive composer in the process. ~ Jason Ankeny