Joe Lovano and Hank Jones

Kids: Live At Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola

(Blue Note)

Here we have a promethean mid-career saxist and a late-blooming pianist (now 89) making music on a deceptively casual but artistically high plane. They’ve recorded together twice before, but with Kids, recorded live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in Manhattan, the pair reach a new expressive apex.

What may seem an easy-going and even “mainstream” jazz encounter is anything but. Lovano and Jones’ balanced set puts a special emphasis on the formidable songbook of Hank’s late brother Thad Jones, kicking off with the warming gust of easy-does-it urbanity contained in “Lady Luck” and also including “Little Rascal on a Rock” and “Kids are Pretty People,” sophisticated charmers both. Lovano’s neo-boppish Charlie Parker tribute “Charlie Chan” and Bud Powell’s “Budo” play into Jones’ organic – and lived-through – relationship with the bebop vocabulary. But he also boasts a distinctive and unsentimental balladic cool, as heard on the pianist’s own lovely “Lullaby” and the suitably-treated “Lazy Afternoon.”

On “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” a Jones solo, the pianist presents his idea of what is beautiful, involving genuine lyricism but also rearranging the harmonic furniture toward a personal musical feng shui. Lovano kicks off Thelonious Monk’s note-smeary “Four in One” with feverish but also soft-textured flurries, and Jones’ solo on the tune reveals no concessions to standard Monk-ishness. Maybe it’s partly because Jones was alive and in full swing at the same time as Monk, making him more of a colleague than an icon on a pedestal.

Jones’ touch is light but never lazy, and his ideas are subtle but never dry or airy. Lovano has a similar sense of poise and adventure in his playing. No wonder they make beautiful music together. For both musicians, this is a remarkable album, and without really trying.

- Josef Woodard