Reggie Workman could choose to lead a band of youngsters through the Messenger songbook or to join in all-star tributes to John Coltrane at festivals around the globe. After all, Workman certainly has the credentials. He played with both Blakey and Coltrane. But that isn’t Workman's way. Though he has nothing but words of encouragement for those who choose to preserve tradition, his own sense of tradition is of music ever in flux.

The shifting personnel on Cerebral Caverns is a sign of Workman's restless intelligence as a bandleader and composer. Sam Rivers and Julian Priester return from Summit Conference, but the tracks on which they are featured here are more molten and open-ended -- especially the aptly titled "Fast Forward," with the fluid Al Foster on drums. Geri Allen turns in incisive work on four numbers, cagily establishing a middle ground between Workman's bass and Elizabeth Panzer's harp on the four-part "Seasonal Elements (Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter)," and reminding us in the process that the piano is itself a stringed instrument, should one choose to play it that way. The new colors on this disc are provided by Panzer's harp, Tapan Modak's tablas, and Gerry Hemingway's samples and electronic drum pads, all of which Workman puts to imaginative use, in pieces that seem to measure the emotional distance between sound and silence, stasis and movement, composition and improvisation.

As a composer, Workman is a situationalist. That is to say, he delights in bringing together what might seem on paper to be unusual combinations of instruments and instrumentalists, and giving them, if not quite a free hand, as much freedom as suits his purpose. He achieves a happy ideal: music in which every last detail seems to bear his signature, but which every player involved is invited -- no, required -- to make an idiosyncratic contribution. It goes without saying -- or should, by this point -- that he is one of the very few bass players to whom the overworked word "virtuoso" actually applies. More important, however, and more to the point of the disc at hand, Workman has never stopped searching or growing. The latest evidence of that is here.

-- Francis Davis

Thank you to Maja Workman for daily understanding, love, and inspiration; to Susanna Vindis for helping to create the needed space to pursue this project; to Andy Boehmke for the laborious hours we spent together reworking musical ideas; and to Will Ruiz for dedicated assistance with coordination throughout this project.

Reggie Workman