Herbie Hancock's cinematic music Maiden Voyage was the sound of the human imagination feeling the bite of a briny mist in the face over a vast, watery horizon.
The archetypal small-group impressionism of the '60s has risen from the depths of time in the grasp of a 34-armed creature called the Westchester Jazz Orchestra. As jazz orchestration, this isn't the ecstatic heartland poetics of Maria Schneider or the heady hipsterism of Darcy James Argue. Yet, the shapely arrangements and bright, muscular playing recall a paragon of the music's era: the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra.
