Chico Freeman Spirit Sensitive 180g LP

TAS Rated 5/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the February 2025 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

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Earl "Chico" Freeman was one of the '70s leading modern tenor saxophone players steeped in the traditions of jazz, recording for independent labels like India Navigation, at his most productive between 1976 and 1981, and still active today.

Spirit Sensitive (1979) represented a change in direction for usually free and avant-leaning Chico, a selection of standards, almost all ballads. As the album title suggests, Freeman brings sensitive reading to familiar compositions, with a clear and full-bodied tone, paired with Cecil McBee's powerful bass thrust into the front line. Percussion is spare, adding texture, with John Hicks piano coloring and completing the music space. Rounding out the players on the album are Billy Hart and Famoudou Don Moye on drums.

Pressed from metal parts mastered with tube electronics by Gavin Lurssen and Ron Lewter at The Mastering Lab. Housed in a Stoughton Printing tip-on gatefold jacket.

The album opens with a duet performance of Vernon Duke's 'Autumn in New York' on which McBee's fluid bass lines and Freeman's gorgeous-sounding saxophone blend together beautifully, and a spacious and transparent recording heightens the experience. Elsewhere Hicks plays the most lyrical of piano solos while Hart's sensitivity behind the drums also elevates the proceedings. [Freeman's] solos on such standards as Rogers and Hart's 'It Never Entered My Mind' and Thad Jones' 'A Child Is Born' are textbook examples of how to play a ballad. Because Spirit Sensitive was originally released on an avant-garde label, it was overlooked at first. The warm and open-sounding Analogue Productions vinyl will help rectify that situation.