The legendary Four Brothers reed section of Woody Herman's famous "Second Herd" big band of 1947, (Herbie Steward, Zoot Sims, Stan Getz and Serge Chaloff) is reimagined and reinvigorated by jazz icons Harry Allen, Eric Alexander, Grant Stewart and Gary Smulyan on the exciting, swinging and audacious recording of The Candy Men by Harry Allen's All Star New York Saxophone Band. Offering a sensational set of twelve bop-infused tunes containing some hard-driving, mid-tempo swing pieces to breathy and bossa-styled ballads, one sampling of this disc is just not enough. The material and the musicianship is so outstanding, that the late, great bandleader Woody Herman himself, would be proud of the way this group of jazz icons, has so elegantly represented the original Brothers section.

Except for occasional trips to the New York live scene and recording sessions, John Hart devotes his time in teaching younger generations as the head of the Jazz Guitar Department at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami. The inspiration for the unusual instrumentation of this album (baritone sax, guitar, bass and drums) came from one of his classrooms where he tutors ensemble playing. He then, of course called his favourite baritone man Gary Smulyan to join the session. Checkmate, the third album by John Hart on SteepleChase was recorded a few weeks before the onset of the Corona virus pandemic. Now after a long dark year of lockdown we hope we can call "checkmate" on the virus.

Charlie Parker's love affair with strings, most notably during the 1950s for Verve Records, made it acceptable for other saxophonists to undertake similar projects. After all, if a player of the magnitude of Parker can indulge, than it must be OK for everyone else. Gary Smulyan, who was a member of the Charles Mingus Big Band, undertook the daunting task of linking the deep, robust sound of a baritone with a string section without creating more than sugar-coated boredom. With the help of Bob Belden's charts, that musical objective is achieved. The deep sound and rich color unique to the baritone is used to good effect on such ballads as "The Bad and the Beautiful," "Lush Life," and "Beware My Heart"…

Baritone saxophonist Gary Smulyan brings here his trademark "contrafacts" (a music making method that shares the chord progressions with other compositions) approach to this first SteepleChase leader outing challenging us (maybe?) to guess the tunes he is employing. Smulyan whose professional career took shape by joining Woody Herman’s Young Thundering Herds at age 22 (1978) has won Critics’ and Readers’ Poll awards numerous times by Downbeat and JazzTimes, among others.