Dom Minasi, Juampy Juarez, Freeland

Dom Minasi lets us know he is fitter than a fiddle these days with his recent duet album with the also very together, harmonically astute Juampy Juarez. Freeland gives us a sophisticated guitarist's guitarists romp through beautifully changes-oriented and beyond-changes freedom in ways that ratify and affirm both ways of sounding the guitar and the very fertile ground that lies between. Make no mistake this is schooled playing in the best sense of the term.

The program goes from the masterfully sculpted changes and enlightened lining of "Angela" to the open blues insights of  "Blues Blues Blues"--and in time to some startling free improvisations. The album ends with a rollicking adventure inside and outside of Monk's classic "Well You Needn't."

This plainly and elaborately, simultaneously, is a tour de force of jazz guitar yesterday and tomorrow. Both are masters, both let the world hang a while as they create sheer joy in the spontaneous, studious and stupendous hipness of absolute guitar expression.

If the planet seems to be going to the dogs right now, literally, there is so much more music left inside our human souls. Here is some of the very best going, a guitar heaven here on this rat nest of a planet. Minasi and Juarez are at the top of expressive brilliance on this one, I tell you true.

If you love the guitar you need to get this album, do.