Door of the Cage (Soul Note)

 Baikida Carroll: trumpet
 Erica Lindsay: tenor sax
 Steve Adegoke Colson: piano
 Santi Debriano: bass
 Pheeroan akLaff: drums  

 
THE WOODSTOCK JOURNAL
January-February 1996
Baikida Carroll’s Fine Muse
by Edward Sanders

 
         There is a Muse that helps a composer come up with melodies. The Muse of Melody is often scorned by modern composers, either by academics with their pointilliste fluffismos and baklavahs of tone-moan, or by the clustering, jarring shrieks of certain strands of jazz. The Muse of Melody is neglected by many of the rappers, and also by many pop stars whose boring melodies float above their sequencer-based thick productions adorned with expensive little moments of ear candy.

          That’s why it was a pleasure to listen to Baikida Carroll’s new CD, DOOR OF THE CAGE, with his fine, fine sense of melody and his many talents as a composer.

          It has swoops of melody, interesting thematic changes; it rises, it dives, it brings forth a weave of instruments, with first one instrument, then another, starring in the weave, but not in the old sense of players taking solos in gigs, but in the sense of intelligent compositional weave, and brilliant use of brilliant instrumentalists.

         Carroll is well known as a composer for the theater, creating music for works by Ntozake Shange, Strindberg, Tennessee Williams, Shakespeare, and many others. This is his fourth album.
The front and back cover paintings were done by Arleen Cooper. They were the final art works of a well-loved Woodstock artist, who recently passed away.