Twenty years after his death, John Coltrane still has a stranglehold on the imaginations of today's young jazz saxophonists. It's easy to see why. Coltrane mixed fire with spirituality and tempered gut-wrenching expressiveness with technical virtuosity. Yet his inspiration is as dangerous as it is seductive; without the purity and longing that made honest every note Coltrane played, all that his worshipful imitators are left with is sound and fury signifying pitifully little.

Courtney Pine, a twenty-three-year-old British Wunderkind, is a Trane man plain and simple. He has a stunning command of his instrument, unflagging energy and an obvious commitment to his idol's rigorous legacy. What Pine lacks is the mysterious but essential x factor of jazz – his own voice. At first ballsy and exciting, Pine's playing begins to feel uncomfortably familiar, drifts quickly into unwitting parody and ends up sounding retrograde and boring. With his robust flair for the dramatic, Pine fares better on ballads, and his soprano workouts are noticeably less beholden to Coltrane – both good signs for the future.

What Pine must do to keep developing is bring more of himself to his music. As it is, Pine is holding fast to the warped Reagan-era dictum of the Marsalis brothers and their ilk: Dare to be conservative. (RS 533)

STEVE FUTTERMAN