Dave Ellis may have blown outside the jazz mainstream during his stints with Charlie Hunter and various Grateful Dead offspring, but on his own – and particularly on State of Mind, his third solo CD and his second with veteran heavyweight producer Orrin Keepnews – the Berkeley saxophonist displays sure footing in the straight-ahead tradition.

Unlike other onetime Berkeley High tenormen, Ellis never relocated to the Big Apple. In some ways, he didn't need to. For State of Mind, Keepnews brings some of New York's finest to Ellis's side. Pianist Mulgrew Miller contributes brilliantly. Among the others are alto saxophonist Vincent Herring and bassists Christian McBride and Peter Washington.

A bark, something between those of Coltrane and Turrentine, rings through Ellis's cascading improvisations, laced at times with a Getz-like lyricism. "Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you," Ellis's horn briefly cries out, remembering a line from the Nat Cole hit, as Charlie Parker's "Barbados" shifts into swingtime following a rumba treatment. Other material comes from the pens of giants like Ellington and Strayhorn. And Ellis adds a couple of commanding originals to the disc, which should go a long way toward gaining him an international rep as one of the tenor titans of his generation.

Dave Ellis plays May 7, Yoshi's, Oakl. (510) 238-9200.
(Lee Hildebrand)

Lunar Heights
Tasting EP (self-released)

Lunar Heights' Tasting EP is what you'd get if you took sound bites from Raymond Chandler and Iceberg Slim and reorganized the words to tell your own story and map your own landscape. It's a kind of mashed-together travelogue of noirish L.A. and barren Oaktown streets.

At first glance, Tasting's sound appears to be created by B-Side producer Z-Zylch, who has some of the slightly ferocious, agreeably glib qualities of hip-hop antecedents like Souls of Mischief. But in the end the group comes off more like urban rapscallians than rapper mystics. On the production tip, this joint is poppin', assembled from crisp, thwack-thwacky beats, melancholy synths, and the occasional scratch flourish. Local waxmaster Shin makes a cameo on the hard-boiled "Wake Up," but otherwise production creds go to Headnodic, with most of the scratching by DJ Platurn of Oakland Faders.