
With Quiver, Ralph Alessi teams with pianist Gary Versace and the trumpeter’s longtime rhythm section of choice – bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits – to create a quicksilver melodicism and subtly energized rhythm; there is a lyricism to Alessi’s playing that channels such forebears as Miles Davis and Kenny Wheeler, the mood reflective, even pensive. As DownBeat says, “Alessi works between the notes, his thoughtful, conversational solos as meditative as a calligrapher’s art, each line free-flowing and declarative but with immaculate shape and beauty.”