I missed the Roy Hargrove Quintet performance in Hong Kong in 2007, and I was sorry at the time. I am doubly so now having seen a DVD of the band, filmed at the New Morning club in Paris, also in 2007.
Several of the tunes featured on Live at the New Morning came out on Hargrove's 2008 album Earfood, performed by the same musicians - Cedar Walton's I'm Not So Sure, Lou Marini Jnr's Starmaker, Kurt Weill's Speak Low, and his own originals Strasbourg/Saint Denis, and Style.
Also present are six more Hargrove compositions and one tune apiece from Miles Davis, Leo Quintero, Bernice Petkere, Johnny Mandel, and the team of Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.
It is a well-chosen mixed bag of highly accessible jazz. At the time of Earfood's release Hargrove said the thinking behind his approach to the music was 'to have a recording that is steeped in tradition and sophistication while maintaining a sense of melodic simplicity'.
You can hear and see the band working towards that objective. All are instrumentalists of a high calibre, and they push each other hard, but they play within hard bop conventions. Nothing challenges the ear.
Davis and Lee Morgan are the trumpeters Hargrove is most often compared with, and there are echoes of both in this music. Many of the tunes have the kind of groove associated with the Blue Note label's classic period.
Although Hargrove leads, he does not dominate, and by the time the DVD was shot the members of the quintet were clearly familiar with each other's moves.