CDs: Bley And Silver

While probing the mysteries of the Macintosh universe and meeting with frustrations, roadblocks and delights (man, this thing is FAST), I have continued to listen. Here are impressions of two of the CDs that have kept me company during my slam-bang self-tutorial and late-night iMac school. 

Bley.jpg
Carla Bley And Her Remarkable Big Band: Appearing Nightly (Watt/ECM). Somehow, this album got by me when it came out in late summer. Since it arrived a few days ago, I've listened to it repeatedly, chuckling, occasionally laughing out loud and shaking my head at Bley's ingenuity and the skill and good humor of her soloists. It had been too long since my last Carla Bley fix.  

Briefly, then, the premise of these pieces seems to be that nostalgia is what it used to be, only more fun. The title composition, "Appearing Nightly at the Black Orchid," was a commission from the 2005 Monterey Jazz Festival. It begins with Bley unaccompanied at the piano. She synthesizes a set that she might have played at the Monterey bar where she worked as a teenaged cocktail pianist in the 1950s. In one minute and twenty-seven seconds, she melds into a coherent whole, phrases from "I'll Be Seeing You," "My Foolish Heart," "Come Rain or Come Shine," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Night and Day," "Here's That Rainy Day," "Stella By Starlight" and "Sweet and Lovely." Then the suite begins. Whether or not it fufills the CD booklet's tongue-in-cheek claim that it is "A Carla Bley Masterpiece in Four Parts," it is serious jazz orchestration at a high level. The leader's usual array of superior soloists has a field day with it. 

Bley was commissioned by a band on the Italian island of Sardinia to write the CD's first two pieces, "Greasy Gravy" and "Awful Coffee," around the theme of food. There are plenty of allusions to support the proposition..."Salt Peanuts," "Watermelon Man," "Tea for Two," "You're the Cream in My Coffee, " "Chopsticks," "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" and "Hey, Pete, Let's Eat Mo' Meat." Bley's "Someone to Watch," also loaded with quotes, and Ray Noble's "I Hadn't Anyone 'Til You" wrap up the album. The recording took place before an audience at a night club in Paris, so, naturally, Bley felt obligated to work in an orchestrated quote from "April in Paris." 

Lest I leave you with the impression that the CD is a variety of musical vaudeville, I assure you that there is a master arranger at work here. For all the fun and games, Bley's canny use of voicings often makes thirteen horns sound like at least four more. She builds dramatic contrast between the horn sections one moment and achieves tight integration among them the next. There is a surprise of one kind or another around nearly every corner. Bley's settings for soloists inspire their creativity and swing. Trumpeter Lew Soloff, trombonist Gary Valente, drummer Billy Drummond and saxophonists Andy Sheppard, Wolfgang Puschnig and Julian Arguelles stand out. Steve Swallow drives the band and provides much of its texture and color. Playing electric bass, he retains the sound, soul and propulsiveness he had on the acoustic instrument he left behind decades ago, while gaining a guitar-like fluency in the upper register. He is a remarkable musician. 

I don't know whether this CD is a masterpiece. I do know that it's an hour of superbly written and performed music that can lift spirits. 

Horace Silver And The Jazz Messengers (Blue Note). Horace Silver made a stir with Stan
Horace Silver.jpg
Getz and with his own trio album in the first half of the 1950s. But this is the set that sent him into the consciousness of listeners around the world when it was released in 1955. Silver's infectious piano playing, the brilliance and directness of his compositions and the chemistry of the quintet he co-led with drummer Art Blakey propelled him into a successful career that has lasted more than half a century. 

The album is one of the pillars of the hard bop movement and a de riguer item in any halfway serious collection. Trumpeter Kenny Dorham and tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley, iconic soloists, constituted one of the great horn partnerships of the fifties; Silver, Blakey and bassist Doug Watkins a rhythm section that inspired musicians everywhere. Silver's eight compositions, including "The Preacher," "Doodlin'," "Creepin' In," and "Room 608," are classics, basic repertoire items for serious jazz players and listeners. If you are one of the thousands of travelers stranded by the Northern Hemisphere's dreadful holiday weather, I wish you the good luck of having Horace Silver and Jazz Messengers on your iPod.

December 24, 2008 12:06 AM | | Comments (2)

Categories:

2 Comments

The Horace Silver record is one of my favorites. Musicians who read your blog can download a transcription of Hank Mobley's solo on "Room 608" from my website, www.scooby-sax.com

The Silver album is classic. Dorham and Mobley were an incomparable front line. In fact, Mobley (IMO anyway) ranks up there with any of the pre-Coltrane hard bop tenors. He had a distinctive tone, full, almost smokey, and great harmonic and rhythmic sense.

I read somewhere (don't remember where) that he was subjected to increasing ridicule when many reed players developed an almost-fanatical dedication to modal harmony following A Love Supreme, to the point where he once left the bandstand in tears. After that, his playing changed substantially - and not for the better.

Still, if you want to hear him in his prime, listen to his first 16 bars or so on "Everything Happens To Me" with Donald Byrd on "Byrd's Eye View", an early Transition session now widely available again.

There's some interesting biographical material here:

http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Mobley,_Hank/Biography/

Leave a comment

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Rifftides published on December 24, 2008 12:06 AM.

The Bill Evans Christmas Serenade was the previous entry in this blog.

Joyeux Noel, Frohe Weihnachten, Feliz Navidad, Christmas Alegre, Lystig Jul, メリークリスマス, Natale Allegro, 圣诞快乐, Καλά Χριστούγεννα, 즐거운 성탄, И к всему доброй ночи is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

AJ Ads

Introducing
AJ Arts Blog Ads

Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.

Advertise Here

AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
CultureGulf
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

jazz
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

classical music
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.