Max Roach

Bright Moments is the last of the Max Roach records for Soul Note that pair his quartet with a string quartet, the formation he called the Double Quartet. Recorded in New York in October 1986 and released in 1987, it brings together Roach's working band and a new line-up of the Uptown String Quartet in five pieces, none of them by the leader. Phil Freeman, in a 2020 survey of these records for Burning Ambulance, found it "a more tasteful and refined album than Easy Winners", the Double Quartet's 1985 studio set.

The sessions took place in New York on October 1 and 2, 1986. Cecil Bridgewater plays trumpet and flugelhorn, Odean Pope tenor saxophone and Tyrone Brown electric bass, with Roach on drums and percussion. The strings are Diane Monroe and Lesa Terry on violins, Roach's daughter Maxine Roach on viola and Zela Terry on cello. The title piece comes from Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Hi Fly from Randy Weston and Double Delight from trombonist Steve Turre, while Pope wrote Elixir Suite and Brown the Tribute To Duke And Mingus. Freeman heard bluesy, swinging writing, with Roach on brushes much of the time, and on the Duke and Mingus tribute "in an almost pure timekeeping role" behind long solos by Pope. The strings mostly play in unison rather than as a classical quartet, but on Double Delight, he wrote, "they really come into their own, almost serving as the lead voice", before the horns trade fours with an explosive Roach. The Double Quartet had begun with the Swedenborg String Quartet in Munich in 1983 for Live At Vielharmonie, and in 1984 Roach recorded Survivors with a string quartet alone.

This LP is a copy of the original 1987 Soul Note vinyl edition, catalogue number SN 1159, on 140 gram vinyl, which CAM Jazz describes as original stock recently found in its vaults: Bright Moments and Elixir Suite on side A, the other three pieces on side B.