Steve Turre's new cd, "Lotus Flower", represents the creative apex of bad jazz. Turre's work transcends mediocrity but slightly, yet shows that insight and originality can turn the bland into the enjoyable. This may sound like a knock on Turre, when in fact I mean anything but. Turre chooses to work in an idiom I find unappealing, yet his innovation and originality so brighten his work that I find his new CD worth repeated listens perhaps just because I know how poor it could've been.

Turre, on "Lotus Flower", plays what I call "Library Jazz", the music called in for social function wallpaper, simple, bland, un-obtrusive. Yet no one could deny that Turre has chops. He plays the trombone-as-lead instrument as so few do. His soulful, voicelike passages are countered easily with a dynamic alacrity that ranges from the playful to the barbaric. Turre can blow. Whenever a Kennedy Center special needs a trombone player, they vie for Turre. If you've watched a PBS music special anytime this decade, you've seen Turre. You've also seen the atrophy of his style. When Turre came on the scene he was known for blowing not only his horn but conch shells of varying shape and tone, blending so-called World Music with jazz in a fresh way. Nowadays, the only thing oceanside about Turre's music is the potential geriatric tourist audience.

But he tries. A slowed-down version of Rahsaan Roland Kirk's "The Inflated Tear" has some interesting atonal string arrangements, but the lush piano and heavy brass over it makes it sound more like the score to "Chinatown" than anything else.

There are a lot of strings on this album, used rhythmically and well, especially on cuts like "the Organ Grinder" and the title track. "Passion for Peace" has the spacier, floating, reverberating quality that some of Coltrane's later work has, or McCoy Tyner's two masterpieces "Extensions" and "Expansions." But just when you think some serious blowing is about to begin, the song wimps out and segues into "Sposin'", introducing a violin lead that sounds to me like a Walt Disney World tribute to Stephen Foster. Not without its merits, but not exciting.

That's about the sum of my praise. If you want to dip your toe into jazz, because all your college friends like it, but it all sounds so messy and random this may be a good place to start. Or if some old guard friend has a birthday and you want to get a gift that's somewhat current. Other than that, skip it.

Turre has the ability to blow like no one's business, and his previous CDs, like "Steve Turre" and "Rhythm Within", proved this, as does his ubiquitous guest appearances. For this reason I will track the career of and continue to listen to new CDs by Steve Turre in the hopes that he will finally match his talents with my sensibilities.