Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
In the right column and for a while directly below, you will find the latest batch of Doug's Picks: two new CDs, a classic album on CD at last, a DVD documentary about a giant of the piano who should not be forgotten, and a book that examines non-musical factors in the evolution of jazz. As always, reader comments are welcome by way of the "Speak Your Mind" box at the end of each post or the "Contact" button on the blue stripe. … [Read more...]
Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette, Somewhere (ECM) The first release in four years by Jarrett’s Standards Trio captures interaction among the pianist, bassist Peacock and drummer DeJohnette that is like the activity of one mind. Their exploration of Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” melds into “Everywhere,” a mantra that builds hypnotic fascination. In the quirkiness of his fragmented first bars of “Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” and his unaccompanied ruminations leading … [Read more...]
Bill Potts, The Jazz Soul of Porgy & Bess (Fresh Sound) In jazz, 1959 was a watershed, milestone, landmark (choose your cliché). Clichés embody truths; that’s how they become clichés. The truth is that this all-star recording of Porgy & Bess was one of the most important of the final year in a golden decade of jazz in New York. Potts’s arrangements are his most celebrated, for good reason. There is passion and commitment in the playing of the 19-piece ensemble and in solos by Art Farmer, Bill … [Read more...]
Cécile McLorin Salvant, Woman Child (Mack Avenue) In this November post, I observed that it was going to take a while to catch up with Cécile McLorin Salvant. It will take a while longer because she is moving fast, but her first CD portrays a singer who has emerged in her early twenties full of talent, versatility, taste and rare artistic judgment. With pianist Aaron Diehl’s trio, Salvant is unfailingly on target interpreting a collection of 12 dissimilar songs. She is equally affecting in … [Read more...]
Erroll Garner, No One Can Hear You Read (First Run Features) This compact, well-made documentary leaves the viewer a puzzle: only 36 years after his death, how can memories of a stunningly original, universally admired pianist have grown so dim? Many, perhaps most, young listeners don’t know about Garner. The film’s abundant performance clips provide reasons that he should be an icon —his spontaneity, his irresistible swing, the witty deceptiveness of his introductions; the joy he took … [Read more...]
Marc Myers, Why Jazz Happened (University of California Press) A respected jazz critic and blogger with a masters degree in US history, Myers assesses the effects of social, political and business forces on the development of the music. He provides context in chapters on the influences of recording technology, radio, race relations, the G.I. Bill, the musicians union and rock culture, among other phenomena. Myers confines discussion of jazz’s first two decades to the introduction, but he is … [Read more...]
Jeremy Steig, Flute Fever (International Phonograph)
The Rifftides campaign for a reissue of the 1963 debut recording of flutist Jeremy Steig and pianist Denny Zeitlin got underway with this observation in a 2005 post:
On Sonny Rollins’s “Oleo,” each of them solos with ferocious thrust, chutzpah, swing and—one of the most challenging accomplishments in jazz—a feeling of delirious freedom within the discipline of a harmonic structure.
Fifty years after it appeared, Flute Fever remains one of the finest albums of the second half of the twentieth century, regardless of genre. At last, it is a CD, but Columbia ceded the honor to someone else. Kudos to Jonathan Horwich and International Phonograph. The reproduction of sound, packaging and artwork is flawless. This is a basic repertoire item.
Christian McBride Trio, Out Here (Mack Avenue)
Bassist McBride was so accomplished so young, it’s natural that at 41 he is an elder statesman grooming emerging players. Pianist Christian Sands and drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr., are the impressive young members of McBride’s new trio, working beautifully with him in all of the areas in which he excels; rhythmic power, melodic inventiveness and unity of purpose. Highlights: the bone-deep swing in Oscar Peterson’s “Easy Walker” and McBride’s “Ham Hocks and Cabbage” and arco playing of exceptional purity by McBride in Richard Rodgers’ “I Have Dreamed.” Unabashedly in the tradition of trios led by Peterson, Billy Taylor, Ray Brown and Jeff Hamilton, McBride meets the high standard they set.
Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, Whit Dickey, Gerald Cleaver, Enigma (Leo Records)
Perelman, a Brazilian living in New York, is a tenor saxophone virtuoso who does not allow standard jazz operating procedure to dictate his approach. In other words, he plays free jazz. His frequent partner is pianist Matthew Shipp, whom the critic Neil Tesser has identified as Perelman’s “blood brother.” The two record together so often —I count 12 albums in the past two years—that keeping up with them could be a sub-specialty. Enigma finds Perelman and Shipp with no bassist and two drummers, Whit Dickey and Gerald Cleaver. Listeners open to this music penetrate thickets of ideas, emotions and internal rhythms. Rewards for attention and patience are intensity, drama, humor and stretches of surprising lyricism.
Thelonious Monk, Paris 1969 (Blue Note)
Dismiss claims that Monk was a burnt-out case after about 1965. There was already evidence to the contrary in the Black Lion recordings, his work with the Giants Of Jazz and the brilliance of his unexpected 1974 Carnegie Hall concert. Now, there is also this DVD assembled from film of a concert at the elegant Salle Pleyel. Monk still had his stalwart tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse. His new young sidemen on bass and drums had broken in nicely. Philly Joe Jones was a surprise guest on drums; the resulting version of “Nutty” is priceless. We don’t see Monk doing his bear dance, but he was in good spirits nonetheless, and he played three crystalline unaccompanied encores.
Terry Teachout, Duke: A Life Of Duke Ellington (Gotham)
Teachout takes readers as close as it may be possible to come to Ellington’s thought processes about his music, about himself and about other people. A charming deflector of inquiry into his compositional techniques, his opinions and his motivations, Ellington was his own most closely guarded secret. Teachout applies his formidable research and narrative skills to parallel stories: Ellington’s relationships with family, friends, sidemen, managers and the music establishment; and how he developed himself into the originator of works whose mysteries defy musicological analysis. Passages describing recordings are all but guaranteed to send serious listeners to their music collections. Thus, hearing the evidence can make reading this remarkable biography a long and rewarding experience.
Warren Wolf, Wolfgang (Mack Avenue)
In a succession of vibraphonists that began with Lionel Hampton and Red Norvo, Wolf has come into his own. His new album finds him with one rhythm section of veterans—pianist Benny Green, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Lewis Nash—and another of young musicians from his own quartet. He and the increasingly impressive pianist Aaron Diehl play duets on two pieces. With Wolf on marimba, the two defy categories in variations on the 19th century trumpet chops buster “The Carnival of Venice.” In “Wolfgang” and “Grand Central” (unrelated to the John Coltrane piece of that name) Wolf the composer writes straightforward melodic invention that is also a hallmark of his soloing. His improvisation on “Frankie and Johnny” is a bluesy joy.
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