Five years ago, Ronnie Dee, longtime Bay area saxophonist and jazz-jam-funkateer, got together in his home studio with drummer Tommy Fessenden and bassist Lemonjello to cut a free-wheeling set of instrumental jams. It sat in the can until now. Better late than never. Legatto Staccato is built around punchy riffs or scraps of melodic ideas, which expand into roaming improvisations that threaten to dismantle but generally pull back together. There is dissonance, but this is no free-jazz freak-out; there's funk, but this is no cookie-cutter jam-band effort; it's jazz, but lacks the self-seriousness of most contemporary acoustic outings. Now a full-fledged project, Legatto Staccato has gigs on the horizon and recently recorded with guitarist Joran Slane. 3.5 stars
This article appears in Aug 8-14, 2007.