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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Archives for August 17, 2013

Recent Listening: Billy Hart, Zoot Sims

Ear Trumpet

We continue in our doomed effort to keep up with recent (more or less) releases.

Billy Hart, All Our Reasons (ECM)

For months I have been listening repeatedly to this CD, one of last year’s best. Somehow, I didn’t get around to writing about it until now.

Hart All Our ReasonsHart, a drummer of flexibility, wide range and exquisite sensitivity, is billed as the leader of a quartet formed in 2003 by the tenor saxophonist Mark Turner and the pianist Ethan Iverson. The bassist is Ben Street. The four have evolved onto a plane of like-mindedness that a band can reach only through time, familiarity, hard work and agreement on goals. Their goals—or reasons— revolve around approaches to time, harmony and interaction that germinated in the late 1950s Miles Davis sextet when Bill Evans was its pianist. The concepts took firm hold in the early ‘60s in the Evans trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, a group that brought lasting change to the nature of the jazz rhythm section.

Although Hart’s drumming has antecedents in Motian’s work and in that of the bop pioneer Max Roach, he has become so distinctive that considerations of his initial infuences are beside the point. With the delicacy of his brushes on cymbals and snare drum he melds rhythmic power and restraint. There’s a prime example that duality in “Nigeria.” Following Street’s muscular introduction, Hart offers a distillation of his style in contrapuntal accompaniment of the complex melody line, the tonal and melodic qualities of his solo and the openness of his time. As Iverson concludes a fleet, witty solo, he discloses the tune’s genealogy in Sonny Rollins’s “Airegin.” Turner, a consistently satisfying soloist, suggests Rollins less than his own early, and continuing, model, Warne Marsh. Elsewhere in the album, in Turner’s “Wasteland,” he suggests of Marsh’s sound, but not strict adherence to his conception. It is a slow piece of mournful beauty.

Iverson’s “Ohnedaruth,” a name conferred on John Coltrane for his mystical and spirtual qualities, is identified in the CD booklet and in Iverson’s piano introduction as a descendant of “Giant Steps.” The piece employs harmonic progressions that have come to be known as Coltrane changes. For the most part it is a conversation among Turner, Street and Hart’s brushes. Iverson ends it with an impressionist fillip that includes a hint of the “Giant Steps” melody. Hart’s reflects his strength as a thoroughly grounded composer in four of the album’s nine piece, including the mysterious opening piece, “Song For Balkis,” and “Imke’s March,” whose passages of ethereal unison whistling bracket drumming and a melody that suggest, perhaps, a parade in a central European village at a time when the world was less complicated.

Zoot Sims, Compatability (Jump)

Whoever named this unexpected and welcome visitor from the 1950s didn’t know how to spell “compatibility.” Worse, Delmark, which has acquired the Jump label’s catalog, isn’t making the CD easy to find. The search Zoot Sims Compatabilityis worth it because the disc contains all of the takes from an obscure 1955 session in L.A. that found the great tenor saxophonist in an octet of superb studio and jazz musicians. It includes only four tunes, but there are as many as four takes of each. Sims, baritone saxophonist Bob Gordon, trombonist Dick Nash and guitarist Tony Rizzi shine throughout. Zoot glistens with originality and fresh ideas on each of his solos, notably so in “The Way You Look Tonight,” and Nash is magnificent in “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” Click on the album’s title above for a trip to Delmark’s website (scroll down) to order the CD or an iTunes download. Bob Gordon devotees will be delighted to find this music by a brilliant player whose life ended at 27 in an auto accident not long after these sessions.

Weekend Listening Tips: Cohen & Davis

On opposite coasts of the US, Jim Wilke (Washington State) and Bill Kirchner (New Jersey) will present stimulating jazz listening this Sunday. Here’s Wilke’s announcement:

Anat Cohen has been winning both critics and readers national jazz polls for several years and she tours continually, playing major jazz festivals and clubs around the world. The last week of July found her in Port Townsend, WA where she was teaching and performing at Centrum’s annual jazz workshop and festival at Fort Worden State Park. Her performance with Dawn Clement, piano, Chuck Deardorf, bass and Jeff Hamilton, drums was recorded for Jazz Northwest and will air on Sunday, August 18 at 2 PM (PDT) on 88.5 KPLU and simultaneously stream at kplu.org.

Hamilton & CohenAnat Cohen was born in Tel Aviv and received her early musical education and experience playing jazz there. While attending Berklee College of Music in Boston she encountered students from Latin and South American cultures which she absorbed into her own music. That experience was further enhanced by a move to New York after graduation which expanded her musical horizons in a variety of settings.

She started her own record label, Anzic Records and has recorded seven CDs as a leader, the most recent is titled Claroscuro. She also plays soprano and tenor saxophones with authority, but her clarinet playing has drawn the most favorable attention and she choose to concentrate on clarinet in this concert. Included are the Artie Shaw theme song Nightmare, Fats Waller’s Jitterbug Waltz, Jimmy Rowles’ ballad,The Peacocks and a Brazilian choro by Pixinguinha, Um a Zero.

Jazz Northwest is recorded and produced by Jim Wilke exclusively for 88.5, KPLU. The program airs Sundays at 2 PM (Pacific) and is available after the broadcast as a streaming podcast at kplu.org

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Here’s Kirchner’s description of the second show in his newly revived participation in Jazz From The Archives:

Recently, I taped my next one-hour show for the “Jazz From The Archives” series. Presented by the Institute of Jazz Studies, the series runs every Sunday on WBGO-FM (88.3).

In the fall of 1967, the Miles Davis Quintet (with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and TonyDavis & Shorter Williams) participated in an all-star tour as part of the Newport Jazz Festival in Europe. Several of the concerts were recorded and/or filmed, but for years they were available only as bootlegs. A couple of years ago, they finally were released legitimately by Sony Records.

We’ll hear performances from several concerts by this Quintet–one of the greatest jazz groups ever–at its peak.

The show will air this Sunday, August 18, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Daylight Time.

NOTE: If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO also broadcasts on the Internet at http://www.wbgo.org/

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, … [MORE]

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