All ballads, all the time, can be a risky method of assembling an album, for even the most seasoned artist. How does one maintain the interest of a listener, track after track, when practically every tune is played at a molasses-slow tempo? Will the lack of rhythmic variation prove to be a turn-off? Coltrane pulled it off, on 1961's Ballads, but that was Coltrane. Recording with strings, too, is a venture rife with artistic hazards for a jazz instrumentalist. In the hands of the wrong arrangers, violins, violas, cellos and basses are likely to come off as saccharine or cloying. Even Charlie Parker wasn't entirely immune from that criticism.

Roy Hargrove, last heard on 1997's Habana, an upbeat, Grammy-winning exploration of Afro-Cuban music, here goes the way of ballads and strings, and he conquers the form with grace and apparent ease. His tone, on trumpet and flugelhorn, is warm, round and expansive. The leader, too, has simpatico, supportive partners: He's joined by regular collaborators Sherman Irby on alto, pianist Larry Willis, bassist Gerald Cannon, drummer Willie Jones III and the Monterey Jazz Festival Chamber Orchestra, the string ensemble heard behind Terence Blanchard on the latter's performance of his similarly tinted Jazz in Film at last year's Monterey Jazz Festival.

Moment to Moment, like Blanchard's disc, is deeply romantic. Hargrove finds fresh melancholy at the center of such chestnuts as "You Go To My Head," the Henry Mancini-penned title track, "I'm a Fool To Want You," "The Very Thought of You" and "I Fall in Love Too Easily," with string arrangements variously written by Willis and Cedar Walton. Jobim gets the treatment, too, and it's a real joy hearing Hargrove's horn lean into every note, savoring its full value before moving to the next one.

Hargrove also takes on contemporary compositions, bringing out the burnished edges of Pat Metheny's melody for "Always and Forever" (arranged by Gil Goldstein), sharing the waterfalling theme of his own "Natural Wonders" (arranged by Hargrove) with Irby and beautifully sketching the legato lines of Jones' closing "Another Time" (arranged by Willis). It's a fitting send-off: Let's hope he stages a return to this format before the end of the decade.
- PHILIP BOOTH

(This review originally appeared in Down Beat. The magazine is available online at http://www.downbeatjazz.com)