Charles Owens Quartet: New York, NY, November 18, 2012

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Charles Owens Quartet Smalls Jazz Club New York, NY November 18, 2012 In 1994, Charles Owens, then a student at the New School, talked then-owner Mitch Borden into letting him run the Sunday afternoon jam session at Smalls, a fledgling basement club that had rapidly become an important incubator of young talent. The tenor saxophonist eventually earned the coveted Friday night slot, and held it for some seven years before recording Charles Owens Quartet, Live at Smalls Vol. 1 (Superbalanced Records, 2003). Nearly a decade after its release, it remains a document of startling power and cogency. Riding the irrepressible wave generated by a band of enthusiastic and capable peers, Owens tears into a mixture of standards and originals. Employing a burly sound that often threatens to resonate through the nervous system, and an endless supply of smartly organized ideas, his intros and solos are akin to a force of nature, yet they contain a sensitive underside. For instance, a bracing, circuitous, unaccompanied prologue, lasting almost three minutes, barely hints at the lovely, conventional ballad treatment of "Autumn in New York" that follows...

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