West 42nd Street

This is one of the better outings for the highly underrated and under recorded Gary Bartz.This live setting sees him in good company with Claudio roditi(trumpet),John Hicks(piano),Ray Drummond(bass) and Al Foster(drums) and given that two of the tracks weigh in at nearly 20 mins a piece it really gives Bartz a chance to stretch out and build a solo.He plays with a passion and energy that rarely shows in his studio work.The only down side is that the sound quality could be better and especially when Bartz works up a good head of steam he wanders away from the microphone making the sound a bit patchy in places which i guess loses this album it's deserved 5th star.This is a great companion piece to his other liver recording "There goes the neighbourhood".Buy it while you can as i doubt Bartz will ever be found in such rare form today.