The Poet

Dark-toned trumpet and flugelhorn player Marquis Hill hails from Chicago's south side and has been lighting up the Windy City scene in recent years. Here, on his third album, the 26-year-old leader plays a modern, technically demanding, and stylistically straight-ahead jazz espoused by Wynton Marsalis and others. Backed by his working sextet, Hill and saxophonist Christopher McBride take a majority of the solos—nicely complementing each other on “B-Tune,” “Vella,” and on the Bill Lee song “Again Never.” Hand percussionist Juan Pastor joins the band for three numbers, bringing a Latin edge and earthy sense of energy to tunes like “The Color of Fear.” Interestingly, there are several shorter tunes with fades, revealing an artist who likes his music to cut to the heart of the matter and get out. Or he simply likes to share a vibe, as he does in a series of interludes. True to the title, the opening and closing pieces feature bits of poetry, which are as tasteful as the rest of this.