Drummer Vladimir Kostadinovic compares his experience during the September 5, 2024 session in New York's Samurai Studios that gestated this tour de force - titled Iris for his daughter, then 8 years old - to the pressure of competing in the Olympic Games.

"You have only one chance," says the 44-year-old Vienna-based drummer. "Everybody believes in you. Don't mess up now." Towards dealing with the pressure, Kostadinovic absorbed and executed sage advice from tenor titan George Garzone, his "second musical father." "George told me: 'Take a risk. Jump from the cliff and swim. You can think when you're rehearsing or composing. But when you arrive on stage or in the studio, that's it - let's go!'" He rises to the occasion with a gold medal performance, deploying his formidable drumset skills towards ensemble imperatives with savoir faire and panache that NBA superstar Nikolai Jokic, a fellow Serbian, might appreciate.

Kostadinovic traces the back story to May 2023, when he propelled the late trumpeter Jim Rotondi's Over Here [Criss-1417], a lovely quintet recital with tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza, pianist Danny Grissett, and bassist Josh Ginsburg, all American expats with whom he'd shared bandstands over the previous decade-plus. In my liner notes, Rotondi stated his appreciation of Kostadinovic's exhaustive assimilation of hardcore jazz drum vocabulary as practiced by his own long-time partners Joe Farnsworth and Kenny Washington, adding: "he has other stuff that I really like - he breathes with the soloist, develops differently with them. He's getting stronger and stronger."

Vladimir Kostadinovic: drums

Ben Wendel: saxophone

Alex Sipiagin: trumpet

Joe Locke: vibraphone

Geoffrey Keezer: piano

Matt Brewer: bass

Chris Potter: saxophone (guest appearance track 1 and 2)