Midweek pick, April 24th, 2024: Waldron, Lacy, Workman and Cyrille live in Antwerp

Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy featuring Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille: Mighty Warriors - Live in Antwerp (Elemental Music Records)

Steve Lacy: soprano saxophone
Mal Waldron: piano
Reggie Workman: double bass
Andrew Cyrille: drums

Several archival jazz releases were made available for this year’s Record Store Day, which too place last Saturday. Between the labels Elemental Music Records and Resonance Records alone, there were 8 or 9, including live recordings by Sonny Rollins, Yusef Lateef, Sun Ra, Art Tatum, and others. While most of those recordings were made during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, my pick of the bunch (Rollins apart) is a more recent live recording of Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy, titled Mighty Warriors, made in Antwerp in 1995. While Waldron and Lacy are listed as co-leaders here, no less significant are the involvements of the equally legendary Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille.

Playing originals by Waldron, Lacy and Workman, plus two Thelonious Monk classics, the band is in top form. They play Waldron’s “What It Is” with swagger, tackle Monk’s “Epistrophy” with a certain jauntiness, sound mysterious and ominous on Lacy’s “Longing”, and stretch out in all sorts of directions for 24 minutes on Workman’s “Variation of III”. The sound of the recording is top notch, too.

While the double LP was a Record Store Day exclusive, the album will be released on double CD and digitally this Friday, the 26th of April.