New York Times
Monday October 22, 1979
Jazz: Baikida Carroll’s Septet

By Robert Palmer

Baikida Carroll has been one of the more impressive trumpeters in the new jazz for several years now. He boasts a big sound, firm control in all registers and an original conception that updates aspects of several jazz trumpet line-ages, including those of both Miles Davis and Fats Navarro. This listener always enjoyed his work as a sideman but never really thought too much about weather he might have something original to say as a composer and group leader- until Saturday night at the Public Theatre.
Mr. Carroll led an ad hoc septet he called Ring through an exceptionally provocative and thoughtfully conceived program of original music. The layers were individually rewarding, and Mr. Carroll wisely left room for a number of solos, duets and trios, but it was the mature ensemble style and the continuity and thrust of the program as a whole that really made the evening a delight.
The percussionist, Nana Vasconcelos; the drummer Billy Hart, and the pianist, Michele Rosewoman, made an effective percussion section; the cellist, Abdul Wadud, and the bassist, Fred Hopkins, also worked hand in glove, and Mr. Carroll and the saxophonist, Julius Hemphill, who have often collaborated in the past, made a biting brass section. These sectional distinctions were emphasized by Mr. Carroll’s arrangements, which treated the group as a small orchestra and drew an appealing range of colors and antiphonal effects from it