| Late | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Alvin Batiste |
| Border: | yes |
| Released: | 1993 |
| Genre: | Jazz |
| Label: | Columbia[1] |
| Producer: | Alvin Batiste |
| Prev Title: | Bayou Magic |
| Prev Year: | 1988 |
| Next Title: | Songs, Words and Messages, Connections |
| Next Year: | 1999 |
Late is an album by the American clarinetist Alvin Batiste, released in 1993.[2] [3] Issued as part of Columbia Records' "Legendary Pioneers of Jazz" series, it was Batiste's first album for a major label.[4] [5]
The album was produced by Batiste. He led Kenny Barron on piano, Rufus Reid on bass, and Herman Jackson on drums.[6] Batiste wrote six of the album's eight songs.[7] "Banjo Noir" was inspired by a Creole folk song from the 1800s.[8] "Ray's Segue" is based on a melody that Ray Charles would play.[9] "Imp and Perry" is based on John Coltrane's "Countdown".[10] Wessell Anderson played saxophone on "Body and Soul".[11]
The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: "Always light and elegant, Batiste weaves delicate, diaphanous strands on the title track and manages a street sensibility coupled with a highbrow complexity on 'Bat's Blues'." The Chicago Tribune stated that "Batiste adds an alert technique and an intense, compositional approach to improvisation."[12] The Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "notes curl like liquid smoke from his blues treatments."
The Times-Picayune stated that "Batiste's round, mellow tone alternates with tweaking arpeggios, gruff growls and jittering chromatics."[13] The New York Times listed Late among 1993's best jazz albums, noting that it moves "from absolutely cool late night atmospherics, to the experimental, and it always swings."[14]
AllMusic wrote that Batiste "has a conventional and pleasing tone that he utilizes to improvise in an unusual and harmonically advanced style."