Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Thomas Marriott: Trumpet Ship

Thomas Marriott: Trumpet Ship

By Dan McClenaghan
March 12, 2020
View read count

Spontaneity rules. Seattle-based trumpeter

Thomas Marriott

trumpet
b.1975

" data-original-title="" title="">Thomas Marriott had a day off from touring with his quartet, so he decided to go into the studio and record an album: Trumpet Ship. His twelfth outing for Origin Records—all of them reaching for the stars, all of them getting there—this quartet album lines up after his stop-you-in-your-tracks gorgeous Romance Language (Origin Records, 2018). A tough act to follow. Marriott and his band follow it well, with a sound which is freer, but every bit as compelling as that of its predecessor.

The music consists of five Marriott originals and three covers, including Jerome Kern's "All The Things You Are," which opens the set with Orinn Evans' solemn, introspective, tolling-bell piano, shifting into a perky, prickly roll and tumble. Marriott blows in a bit under the two-minute mark, giving the familiar tune a fierce intensity. In the 1950s and 1960s, trumpeter

Miles Davis

trumpet
1926 - 1991

" data-original-title="" title="">Miles Davis presented a good deal of his music via his two Great Quintets. This ensemble could be tagged Thomas Marriott's Great Quartet, with pianist Evans, bassist

Luques Curtis

bass, acoustic

" data-original-title="" title="">Luques Curtis and drummer

Mark Whitfield

guitar
b.1966

" data-original-title="" title="">Mark Whitfield. The group operates with a focused agitation and intensity, leaning "outside" without quite stepping out the door.

"General Assembly," a Miles Davis /

Gil Evans

composer / conductor
1912 - 1988

" data-original-title="" title="">Gil Evans /

Wayne Shorter

saxophone
1933 - 2023

" data-original-title="" title="">Wayne Shorter composition, glows with an unrelenting momentum; and the Marriott-penned "Behind the Beard" explores a drifting ballad groove, Marriott sounding marvelous on the mute. The disk's title tune, written by saxophonist

Sonny Simmons

saxophone, alto
1933 - 2021

" data-original-title="" title="">Sonny Simmons, features Marriott burning things up, giving way to a frenetic piano solo from Evans.

"148 Lexington"—the title taken from the address of the office from which Marriott day-jobbed as a process server in the earlier, leaner days of his music career—is possessed of a detached and surreal vibe, a Miles Davis, Ascenseur Pour L'echafaud (Fontana, 1958) atmosphere—mesmerizingly beautiful.

Marriott wrote the closer, "Song For Samuel," for his son, riding out the session with a brassy, straight-ahead, high-velocity high.

Recorded in three hours, the music does indeed have a feeling of freshness and first-take spontaneity. Another excellent album from Seattle's Thomas Marriott.

Learn more about our star rating system

Track Listing

All The Things You Are; General Assembly; Behind The Beard; Trumpet Ship; 148 Lexington; Funny Uncle; Reversal of Fortune; Song For Samuel.

Personnel

Thomas Marriott

trumpet

Orrin Evans

piano

Luques Curtis

bass, acoustic

Mark Whitfield, Jr.

drums

Album information

Title: Trumpet Ship | Year Released: 2020 | Record Label: Origin Records

PREVIOUS / NEXT

Fodder On My Wings
< Previous

Cold Fusion: The Search for the Jazz...
Next >