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ON POINT Blank Tony Kofi is joined by The Organisation, specialists in soul, jazz and funk. His pulsating baritone saxophone rocks the grooves of the album, with organist Pete Whittaker, guitarist Simon Fernsby and drummer Peter Cater contributing to the rhythmic impetus.
On opener Minor League, an opus from Duke Pearson, Cater strikes his skins and is joined by Kofi’s baritone, deep and guffawing through a signature solo.
His horn maintains a serene lyricism and Whittaker’s organ phrases are subtle, unforced and often gentle in a moving version of McCoy Tyner’s Search for Peace. It’s very different from the down-home sound of organist D Lonnie Smith’s LS Blues, with a groovy Whittaker and a gritty southern-sounding Fernsby chorus.
Kofi lives up to the earthy brilliance of the great baritonist Pepper Adams’s-penned Boss Allegro and on Wes Montgomery’s romp Full House Fernsby shines, with Kofi following him on a guttural solo from a deep, deep place in his horn.
Fernsby is quick off the blocks during his solo on trumpeter Woody Shaw’s Moontrane, full of reminders of the blues of the great Grant Green. Then it is Horace Silver’s Summer in Central Park, with Kofi's notes placid and relaxed.
Organist Jimmy Smith devised and popularised the organ quartet in his Blue Note and Verve albums of the 1950s and 1960s and his tune Ready and Able makes for an apt and swinging finale, with all members in prime fettle.
Not that Point Blank is any bland imitation of great records from the past. It a vibrantly contemporary album, full of freshness and vitality.
And it’s an open invitation to go and hear the ever-active Kofi and his bandmates in the many venues across the country where they carve out their sound.
Point Blank is released by Last Music.