Review: Released in 1964, groundbreaking hard bop classic Breaking Point! marked a departure for trumpet legend Freddie Hubbard. Having established himself with The Jazz Messengers, this album showed him breaking out as a player with some daring and expressive playing that went full tilt into modal sequences and rapid fire notes that shook up the state of play and showed new possibilities for jazz as the 60s progressed. In its position between wild experimentation and tradition, it retains musical form which makes the edgier angles go down very smoothly indeed. You can see why this would be a candidate for Decca's Tone Poet series - Hubbard's expression has rarely been matched, in composition or execution.
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