Todd Coolman: Crescent City Ditty

Perfect Strangers was created under the mechanisms and auspices of ArtistShare, an online environment for artists from different locales and backgrounds to collaborate. In this case, accomplished bassist Todd Coolman gathered some of the top-notch working New York City musicians to pair up with composers who answered his "open call" for new tunes from the ArtistShare community. Coolman's quintet successfully meets the challenge of interpreting music they were seeing and hearing for the first time.

"Crescent City Ditty" has a catchy head. Coolman's thumping bass and John Riley's cymbal work carries this straight-ahead piece forward through the changes. Jim McNeely's fine keyboard work leads to a nice workout from trumpeter Brian Lynch. McNeely returns to swing it. Saxophonist Eric Alexander enters with a staccato blaze before he stretches things out. The grooving head arrangement returns to take the piece home. This is good music played with a flowing momentum and straight-ahead power. It is also proof positive that collaboration borne of the Internet can be a beautiful thing.