"New Music That Stays New" is the promotional slogan for Warner Bros.' first concentrated attempt to establish a jazz catalog. "New Music" is a flexible term applied to just about anything that might otherwise be called Seventies jazz and most often associated with the inspiration of Miles Davis and his student/influence John Coltrane. Accordingly, the key albums in this release are all directly related to that inspiration.

Miroslav Vitous, the prodigiously talented Czechoslovakian bassist who played with the early Seventies Miles Davis band and helped form its ambitious spinoff, Weather Report, employs former Davis sidemen Herbie Hancock and drummer Jack DeJohnette for his second solo album, Magical Shepherd. The three interact beautifully; Hancock's keyboard work often sounds better here than it has on his recent solo albums. But the record's effect is diminished by monotonous vocal chants and too many aimless synthesizer doodlings.

Pat Martino's Starbright also evokes a Miles Davis mood at its most effective moments, especially on cover versions of two classics written by Wayne Shorter for the mid-Sixties Davis quintet, "Fall" and "Nefertiti." Several compositions from the Martino band —"City Lights," "Masquerada," "Eyes" and the title track—show off the guitarist's lighter technique to great effect, but the louder songs, which Martino jokingly refers to as "heavy metal," are unconvincing.

The two albums related to Coltrane rather than Davis are more substantial. Alice Coltrane's most evocative music carries into Eastern devotional settings the spiritual legacy of her husband's final days. Eternity restates this theme, Alice experimenting with orchestral settings as she's done for years in collaboration with producer Ed Michel, this time including an adaptation of "Spring Rounds" from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The album's longest track, "Los Caballos," breaks the consistency for a Latin-jazz jam that features some fine organ playing from Alice but sounds like filler in this context.

If Alice evokes her husband's spiritualism, Rahsaan Roland Kirk resurrects his pre-Ascension spirit. Kirk is to Coltrane what Sonny Stitt is to Charlie Parker—his finest interpreter—without in any sense being an imitator. Kirk's musical sensibility transforms everything he covers into a personal statement, from pop standards to jazz classics. Saxophone great Frank Foster contributes vocal/instrumental arrangements for "There Will Never Be Another You," Coltrane's "Giant Steps" and Kirk's "Theme for the Eulipions." But the album's high point is an impossibly tender rendition of the Charles Mingus ode to Lester Young, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," which breaks from Kirk's spoken-word interpretation of the theme to his double-tracked tenor solo. As important as inspiration is, it must be transcended by personal vision, which is why Kirk's is the best record of the lot. (RS 215)

JOHN SWENSON