The Jessica Jones Quartet is a two-tenor quartet, featuring the husband-and-wife team of Jessica and Tony Jones, and here they are joined by drummer Deszon Claiborne (who first played with the quartet in the late 1990’s) and bassist Stomu Takeishi (who started working with the group in the 1980’s and regularly during the past two decades). This is the sixth album by the quartet, featuring four originals and a song apiece by Jackie McLean and Connie Crothers. In recent years I have certainly come to appreciate sax-led music far more, thanks to my discovery of Dave Newhouse and his amazing releases with The Muffins and others, so this is a delight. There is always an additional spark when an album features family members or spouses, as there is a togetherness which only comes from being together so much, something also true when bands live together in the same property (The Muffins, Fairport Convention, for example). Here Tony and Jessica weave their melodic spells, interweaving the threads with incredible dexterity, while Stomu and Deszon also keep everything moving at pace, but one can imagine these two looking at the two saxophonists for guidance as they create the spell.
There is a great deal going on here, and at times the note density is almost unreal, but they also shift and move the tempos, creating space and allowing the rhythm section to take more of a lead role when the time is right. This was recorded live, after their first West Coast tour came to an abrupt halt as the Covid lockdown commenced. Jessica did not want to lose what they had been developing, so she arranged for a local sound engineer to come to the house they had rented and record their repertoire. Afterwards, Stomu cooked a meal which included a salad decorated with edible flowers, and that element in the face of the unknown had a huge impact on Jessica, hence the name of the album. It is an absolute delight, and anyone interested in sax-led inventive jazz music needs to hear this at once, if not sooner. 9/10
