{"id":1165,"date":"2009-01-13T17:29:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-14T01:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/01\/rediscovering-andrew-hill.html"},"modified":"2014-06-30T14:19:03","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T21:19:03","slug":"rediscovering-andrew-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/01\/rediscovering-andrew-hill.html","title":{"rendered":"REDISCOVERING ANDREW HILL"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pioneers of my favorite period of jazz — the ’50s and early ’60s — have been dying off at a dispiriting pace lately. A few weeks ago we lost trumpeter Freddie Hubbard<\/a>, whose “Open Sesame” and work on early Herbie Hancock records i love. The other day i walked into amoeba’<\/a>s jazz room and heard the clerks blasting his classic “Hub Tones.”\"220px-Smokestack_album\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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but over the last year or so i’ve been rediscovering the work of andrew hill, a pianist who died in 07. hill did not define a chapter of jazz the way thelonious monk or bill evans did, but you can tell exactly who’s playing when he comes on.<\/div>\n
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with weird harmonies, odd chromaticism and a brooding, intellectual quality to much of his playing, it’s crossed with just enough avant-gardism to keep you a bit off balance. but like saxophonist joe henderson, with whom he had a lot in common, this music is essentially tuneful.<\/div>\n
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hill’s most famous record is the wonderful “point of departure,” though that record is dominated by eric dolphy’s out-there saxophone and other weird horns — dolphy took over a record the way peter lorre took over any film he was in.<\/div>\n
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so i’ve been trying to find more “pure andrew,” and sinking into 60s blue notes like “judgement!” and “smokestack<\/a>.” you get lots of hill on both, with no horns, and lots of richard davis, the incredibly resonant bassist who helps make van morrison’s “astral weeks” so soulfully spooky.<\/div>\n
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photo flickr user 7<\/a>\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pioneers of my favorite period of jazz — the ’50s and early ’60s — have been dying off at a dispiriting pace lately. A few weeks ago we lost trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, whose “Open Sesame” and work on early Herbie Hancock records i love. The other day i walked into amoeba’s jazz room and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[176,42],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-andrew-hill","8":"category-jazz","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}