Chris Potter, Traveling Mercies

By Natalie Sit

I like Chris Potter. There’s always the fear with jazz that the musician will go off on some crazy tangent and leave the listener behind. Potter doesn’t do that, which is good because his primary instrument is the saxophone. I don’t know what it is about saxophonists, but they always want to show off their range. Potter does that to an extent, but it’s for the songs and not merely to stroke his ego.

One complaint about this cd is the press release’s claim of "electric keyboards and sampled sounds"–something cool to draw the kids in. No boys and girls, it all sounds pretty natural, and I for one don’t mind.

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