Re-creating sounds of the trumpet masters

Sometimes it seems as though there’s almost nothing Arturo Sandoval can’t do if he puts his mind to it. The Cuban expatriate, whose life story was the subject of the HBO film “For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story,” was one of the founders of the pioneering, Grammy Award-winning jazz ensemble Irakere, and he was both a protege and a member of Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra.

But that was just the beginning. Anyone who has seen Sandoval’s live performances has to marvel at his extraordinary versatility, playing trumpet, singing, pounding out percussion on the timbales and moving to the piano for a rhapsodic solo. His last album, “My Passion for the Piano,” showcased his well-crafted skills at the keyboard. With his new release, however, Sandoval has taken on an entirely different task, and a daunting one, at that.

Arturo Sandoval

“Trumpet Evolution” (Crescent Moon/Columbia)

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After surveying the history of jazz trumpet, he decided to offer his own simulations of the instrument’s evolution, from Louis Armstrong to Wynton Marsalis. Working with executive producer Quincy Jones, Sandoval transcribed the music of each selection and chose musicians, recording facilities and appropriate instruments to best resonate with the originals.

Having done that, he then decided to toss in a pair of classical pieces -- Gliere’s “Concerto for Soprano Coloratura” and Tartini’s “Concerto in D Major” -- for good measure. The results, from a technical point of view, are remarkable. The 19 cuts, which include Armstrong’s “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South,” Bix Beiderbecke’s “At the Jazz Band Ball,” Roy Eldridge’s “Little Jazz,” Miles Davis’ “Round Midnight” and Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring,” do an extraordinary job of simulating the originals.

In “Dippermouth Blues,” for example, he captures the broad sound of Joe “King” Oliver -- as he does with the lush sound of Harry James in “Man With a Horn.” In “Tee Pee Time,” Sandoval portrays both the flowing, open-horn phrasing of Clark Terry and his crisply articulated playing with a mute.

In contrast, his version of Maynard Ferguson in the Stan Kenton Orchestra specialty number “Maynard Ferguson” slides into the upper stratosphere with all the headlong abandon of Ferguson’s original solo. And on “Joy Spring” he dances lightheartedly through Brown’s classic set of choruses.

In the classical pieces -- as well as his version of Rafael Mendez’s “La Virgen De La Macarena” -- Sandoval makes the same sort of transformation of tone and attack that Wynton Marsalis is able to do, shifting easily from jazz into the very different demands of the classical trumpet style.

It’s amazing stuff, all of it, brilliantly performed (although simulating the vocals of Bunny Berigan and Chet Baker was too much of a stretch even for Sandoval). But once past the amazement, the question that lingers is why do all this in the first place? Why replicate the playing of these artists when the originals are all available on CD reissues?

The first reason that comes to mind is that in an uncertain marketplace, recordings with a high thematic content usually have a better shot at receiving attention -- as this one surely will. The second -- and, from Sandoval’s point of view, perhaps the most important reason -- is simply that he couldn’t resist the opportunity to intimately experience the music of so many of his noble predecessors.

But with his piano display, his trumpet virtuosity and his life story now all wrapped up, so to speak, it’s time for Sandoval to dig more deeply into his own inner musicality, his own trumpet playing, and his own unquestioned creative inventiveness.

Sandoval isn’t the only jazz trumpeter with a new release. Here’s a pair from two of the instrument’s important players:

Dave Douglas

“Freak In” (RCA Bluebird)

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Like Sandoval, Douglas is never content to remain in the same mode for long. Here he pointedly addresses the question of whether there can be a believable link between jazz and contemporary techno and electronica. His solution is a kind of 21st century version of what Miles Davis did in his electric period, what Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul did with Weather Report, and what Chick Corea did with Return to Forever.

Amazingly, it works well, in part because jazz improvisation and jazz rhythm are the constants, with all the electronic swoops and swirls flowing through the music as yet another orchestrated variation on the jazz experience. Perhaps most important, the CD underscores that it is Douglas’ innate lyricism which is, despite all his avant-garde predilections, his most appealing quality. No matter how disjunct his melodies, they all seem to flow in a fashion that is emotionally engaging, making even the most aurally chaotic moments in this fascinating recording well worth hearing.

Roy Hargrove

“The RH Factor” (Verve)

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Hargrove also reveals a fascination with contemporary sounds and rhythms in an album due in stores May 20, but it is substantially different from the path taken by Douglas. With artists such as D’Angelo, Erykah Badu and Q-Tip as guests, it’s pretty apparent that he’s aiming the album toward the pop crossover market rather than his core jazz audience. Fortunately, Hargrove alternates some of the more overtly pop, rap and soul-oriented numbers with tunes such as “Pastor ‘T,’ ” “Hardgroove” and “Out of Town,” in which his characteristically high-quality, straight-ahead playing and writing surface. But it’s hard to see where he can go with a such a hybrid outing, because it’s unlikely that either of his targeted audiences will be receptive to the alternative genre.