*** Renée Rosnes

AS WE ARE NOW

(Blue Note)

For her fifth album as a leader, pianist Rosnes has assembled a quartet with Chris Potter on tenor and soprano sax, Christian McBride on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Rosnes's playing, with its muscular impressionism and subtle lyricism, is reminiscent of Maiden Voyage-era Herbie Hancock but with a more sophisticated emotional undercurrent -- whereas Herbie, as it turned out, was just going through a phase, Rosnes has a long-haul commitment to this intricate, ruminative approach, and on trio cuts like "Abstraction Blue" and Tony Williams's "Pee Wee" she achieves a complex and unresolved mood of elated disenchantment that seems to sum up the heart of jazz's revived mainstream.

Potter has a knotty, journeyman style that comes across, on his brief features here anyway, as too generic to impress, but the rhythm section holds the interest with its busy elasticity, DeJohnette's brushwork on Walt Weiskopf's "Non-Fiction" being a model of aggressive support. A solid date, then, offering the always welcome pleasure of hearing an accomplished improviser at the peak of her powers.

-- Richard C. Walls