JED LEVY, Faces and Places

In addition to his lofty status as a mainstay on the NYC jazz scene for four decades, sax legend Jed Levy is a world traveling musician and prolific composer whose resume truly embodies the sometimes overused “Who’s Who of Jazz” cliché.

We can start the list with Jack McDuff, Chico O’Farrill, Mike Clark, Geoffrey Keezer and Marvin “Smitty” Smith (which only scratches the proverbial surface), but we shouldn’t leave out that single week where he played with the Cab Calloway Orchestra, Mike Clark/Charlie Hunter and the Apollo with the Temptations and Four Tops.

While grounded in bebop traditions and an inventively swinging, richly improvisational cosmopolitan vibe, Levy and his working quartet infuse his 11th album Faces and Places with a wildly eclectic sense of adventure appropriate for the geographically diverse theme and a chronicle of notable locations and people and cultures he’s experienced throughout his journey. The set begins with a briskly paced, partially Afro-Cuban ode to our obsession with “Email” and a lyrical, high spirited tribute to late drummer Steve Berrios (“Danza de Berrios”) featuring a hypnotic percussion bell pattern at the end that Berrios taught Levy’s drummer Alvester Garnett.

Then the proverbial, sometimes swinging, always silkily soulful and shimmering with exotica jazz plane takes off for a multitude of destinations, stopping first in the charming Rome adjacent town of “Calcata” (approached with a sly sense of mystery) and winking at a friend in Rome via the fast struttin’ “Twiddle Twaddle” (her pet phrase) before taking us to the coolly swinging, fun-filled island of “St, Simons.” In addition honoring his work with West Indies musicians on the infectious, deeply percussive “Personable,”

Levy extols the virtues of the Canary Islands (via the punchy, exuberant “Tenerlife” (featuring one of Grammy winning pianist Luis Perdomo’s most rambunctious solos), the graceful beauty of Japanese poetry (“Haiku”) and Brazilian music on the danceable, sweetly romantic “Partido Tenor,” whose title is a play on the rhythm partido alto. “Postscript” makes for a colorful bookend to “Email” and includes the same AOL-styled chime as the opener.