" data-original-title="" title="">Stephen Menold's ride On the Night Bus is for the most part an amiable and pleasant trip, one wherein the Canadian-born bassist's quintet revisits a time when bop reigned supreme and giants whose names are forever enshrined in the historic annals of jazz were alive and swinging. While Menold says his series of ten original compositions represents a portrait of his home base of Montreal, it could as well be an homage to those pathfinders who raised bop to its summit and entrusted the necessary tools for their successors to enhance that framework.

Take, for an example, the opening track, "Frou Frou," an ebullient swinger whose bop-shaped harmony and rhythm would have been right at home on a Prestige or Blue Note recording from the 1950s or 1960s. The same holds true, at a slightly slower tempo, for the free and easy "Person Mcfurson," as it does for the warm and flavorful "Chili" and most everything that follows including the ballads "The Writer" (on which Menold plays arco bass) and "In Waiting." "Not Approved" and "Scuffle" are lively old-school flag-wavers, as is "On the Night Bus," which cleaves even more snugly to the pattern established by the quintet's esteemed forebears. The album's closing theme, the amiable "4 am Shuffle," is also its longest, running more than ten minutes.

While Menold is a splendid writer whose sunny themes should please almost anyone who appreciates straight-ahead jazz as exemplified by bop, the question remains: what about the musicians? It is here, of course, that comparisons must be drawn. Even though Menold's ensemble consists of standout players from the Montreal area, they are clearly not in the same class as those who helped create the music. That's not a put-down, simply a fact. Trumpeter