Criss Cross Jazz 1311 CD

Alex Sipiagin

Mirages

On his seventh Criss Cross album Russian trumpeter Alex Sipiagin offers a program of four originals, a tune apiece by Joe Henderson and Wayne Shorter from their 60s Blue Note period, and a songbook chestnut, approaching each one with virtuoso chops and fresh ideas, in the process reaffirming his position as a major voice in his instrument's timeline.

Joining him are pianist Mulgrew Miller, Sipiagin's bandmate in the Dave Holland Sextet; tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, a musical colleague since the mid-90's, when both started working with the Mingus Big Band; bassist Boris Kozlov, with whom Sipiagin emigrated to New York from Russia in 1991; and state-of-the-art New York drummer Johnathan Blake.