Bruce Forman Quartet - Pardon Me! (1988)

01.Count Down
02.Skylight
03.Pardon Me
04.I Thought About You
05.Blues For Wes
06.Picture Window
07.Autumn Leaves
08.Once Again
09.I Hear A Rhapsody.

Bruce Forman - guitar
Billy Childs - piano
Jeff Carney - bass
Eddie Marshall – drums.

This is an excellent cd, a bit more modern than some of the other Forman recordings I've heard to date. Deeply rooted in the bebop idiom, Forman reveals other sides of his playing here, including a profound debt to Coltrane and an awareness of `outside' playing in his improvisation. Both the opener, Countdown (a Coltrane classic), and the title tune - a Forman original - exhibit the agility of the guitarist and testify to the close interplay between Forman and his drummer. At the other end of the range we find Forman's straightforward tribute to Wes Mongomery in Blues for Wes, and Skylight, a gospel-like jazz waltz where pianist Billy Childs' Bill Evans-influenced playing provides a nice counterpoint to Forman's statement. The standards Autumn Leaves and I Hear a Rhapsody are both first-takes, and receive a fresh and loose treatment by the group. Especially the latter is interesting, prefiguring the sort of bebop-with-an-edge explorations found on the younger guitar-wizard Kurt Rosenwinkel's later album, Intuit (CrissCross).