The Hofbauer/Rosenthal Quartet: Human Resources
Creative Nation Music

Not many months ago, guitarist Eric Hofbauer issued the debut set Cull the Heard by his improv trio Pocket Aces and now follows it with the debut release by The Hofbauer/Rosenthal Quartet (HRq), the post-bop outfit he leads with trumpeter Dan Rosenthal. Though the group name places theirs at the forefront, the band is largely democratic: not only are bassist Aaron Darrell and drummer Austin McMahon integral to the group sound, the two also authored three of the album's ten tunes. That non-hierarchal mindset translates into ensemble performances marked by swing and mobility, with all four denizens of Boston's vibrant music scene equally engaged in the shared endeavour. Bop is the band's lifeblood, but HRq is no nostalgia act: an open-ended spirit infuses their acoustic interplay in a way that suggests a contemporary sensibility, one that's not necessarily iconoclastic yet still rooted in forward-thinking.

Hofbauer's “Another Gig, Same Egg” opens the album with a cool, noirish vamp that pairs Rosenthal's muted filigrees with his partner's fingerpicked Guild guitar, the latter one of the quartet's distinguishing sounds. The trumpeter shows himself an assertive, daring soloist, agile and virtuosic but not indulgent, while the guitarist is as adventurous as ever, his spotlight almost flamenco-like in its lightspeed flourishes yet free, too. And at this early stage the bassist and drummer present themselves as natural participants in their elastic handling of tempo and texture. Human Resources' bop heart beats mightily in Rosenthal's subsequent “Blues in Keflavik,” whose bright head's got Charlie Parker written all over it, after which smatterings of funk and Latin rhythms seep into “Nice Weather” to give the piece a breezy, almost tropical vibe; with that as a springboard, the leaders serve up some of their most acrobatic interplay when Hofbauer unspools counterlines to Rosenthal's brash expressions, the guitarist deftly finishing off his partner's sentences.

As the title of Darrell's “Lisney Dand” indicates, the band's serious but also allows room for levity. But though the tune might suggest a cubistic take on Disneyland, it actually drew for inspiration from the bassist's reading of Robin Kelley's recent Monk biography. Rosenthal later pays his own kind of homage with “Think of Some,” a classic example of midtempo jazz that sees brushed drums and walking bass lines backing both unison and solo statements by the frontliners. The album's teeming with other nods and not only bop-associated ones: Hofbauer's “Ornate Context” is an affectionate tribute to one of the guitarist's earliest heroes, McMahon's “Half Full” works an Elvin Jones-styled handling of mambo into its buoyant pulse, and there are moments during Hofbauer's “Courting Madness” where Darrell's playing exudes a somewhat Mingus-like bite. Rosenthal openly acknowledges the influence of Jimmy Giuffre's writing on the ballad “Sail,” one of the album's more chromatically adventurous pieces in its arresting oscillations between major and minor. And while bop is the album's nucleus, other styles enter the picture, too. One would hardly label the loping lurch of “Courting Madness” bop, for instance, even if a swinging episode does emerge partway through.

Though Rosenthal and Hofbauer naturally build upon the foundation of their precursors, their guitar-trumpet frontline puts some degree of distance between HRq and saxophone-trumpet pairings like Miles-Coltrane, Parker-Gillespie, and Ornette-Cherry. Further to that, Human Resources not only presents a different side of Hofbauer compared to Cull the Heard but also to the four Prehistoric Jazz recordings his Eric Hofbauer Quintet issued featuring re-imaginings of material by Stravinsky, Messiaen, Ellington, and Ives.

December 2018