Jazz
Imani Records / 88 Keys Productions · 13 November 2025
“Autumn Leaves” is the track that explains the record. It is a ballad everyone has heard a thousand times at a slow tempo, and here it arrives Latinised and at another pulse. The device works, the song wakes up, and the problem is that Dwayne Dolphin applies it to almost the whole programme: Miles Davis’s “Milestones”, Sonny Rollins’s “St. Thomas”, Juan Tizol’s “Perdido”. Eight tracks behind a single arranging idea.
The front line is what holds it up. Trumpeter James Moore has the best solo material on the record and spends it well, in short statements without ornament; Scott Boni’s alto sits clearly below him, and the imbalance shows every time the two alternate. Antonio Croes on piano is the third soloist of weight. Dolphin stays on bass doing his job, with George Heid III on drums and, on two tracks, Victor Provost’s steelpan, the most interesting colour on the album and the one used least.
Dolphin has said he made it because the jazz he was hearing did not satisfy him and he wanted to recover the spirit he grew up with in Pittsburgh. The premise is nostalgic and so is the result: two originals of his own (“Snooky & Ricky”, with group vocals, and the closing “Rated RG”), one by George Heid III (“Were They Only Dreams?”) and five repertory pieces. Nobody will find anything here that was not here before.
Imani Records released it on 13 November 2025. Eight tracks.
Rating: 6.5/10
Text by Aina Torrents