Recent CDs, Part 3

Let’s wrap up the survey of a few of the recent CDs from High Note.
Billy Hart, Quartet (High Note). Hart is a 65-year-old drummer prized by Stan Getz, Wes Montgomery, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Dena DeRose, Pharaoh Sanders, Frank Morgan and virtually anyone else who has ever played with or heard him. Here, he leads an eclectic group with pianist Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus; the quiet, strong, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner; and Ben Street, a bassist who operates in the present with the past and the future in mind. Hart’s compositions are as hip as his playing. I see no reason why his ballads “Charvez” (with allusions to Rachmaninoff) and “Lullaby For Imke” should not become jazz standards. Taken together, his four tunes, those by Iverson, Turner, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, and resourceful playing by all hands, add up to one of the freshest albums I’ve heard this year. How does a band play the melody of “Confirmation” four times in a row at the beginning of the piece without seeming repetitious? It has to do with the drumming. They compensate by not playing the melody at all at the end. Clever.
Cedar Walton, One Flight Down (High Note). Walton, among the finest jazz pianists for more than forty years, grows at once more expressive and more economical. Not that he has lost power or facility. Rather, he is increasingly judicious in his choices and placements of notes. Space is often an important ingredient in his solos, but he still marshals all ten fingers to build harmonic sequences of majestic density. Walton connects “Lush Life,” “Daydream” and “Raincheck” in a medley of Billy Strayhorn compositions, keeping the tempo bright even on “Lush Life,” so often played at the pace of a slow crawl. He does the same for another ballad, “Time After Time,” infecting it with a cordial, loping quality and a Red Garland tag ending. Walton’s longtime bassist David Williams, solid as ever, has an engagingly witty solo on Sam Jones’s “Seven Minds. Twice in “Raincheck,” drummer Joe Farnsworth plays two chorus-long solos using brushes. In both, he demonstrates that “melodic drum solo” is not an oxymoron. High Note’s ubiquitous Vincent Herring plays tenor saxophone rather than his customary alto on two Walton pieces, “One Flight Down” and “The Rubber Man.” If Cannonball Adderley is his model on alto, Herring’s primary inspiration on tenor seems to be middle-period John Coltrane, with a substantial Hank Mobley component. Of Walton’s scores of albums, this seems to me one of his best.
Briefly noted:
Ernie Andrews, How About Me (High Note). At seventy-nine, Andrews rolls on, as moving when he sings the blues as he is with superior standards. In addition to well-known popular songs (“The More I See You,” “This is Always”) and plenty of blues-inflected material, he includes rarities: Berlin’s “How About Me,” Ellington’s “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dream” and Sammy Fain’s “The Wildest Gal in Town.” Tenor saxophonist Houston Person and a good rhythm section assist.
Frank Morgan, Reflections (High Note). The story of Morgan’s kicking his bad habit and rehabilitating his career is two decades old. The important news is that, approaching his mid-seventies, he is playing the alto saxophone with great beauty. Morgan’s work here is centered in calmness and consideration that justify the album title. Alec Wilder frequently railed against musicians who failed to observe his melodies at least on the first chorus. He would love Morgan’s first chorus on “I’ll Be Around.” I have a feeling that Wilder would like the improvisation, too. Thelonious Monk might even smile a little at what Morgan and pianist Ronnie Mathews do with “Monk’s Mood.” Full disclosure: I wrote the liner notes, during the course of which I listened to the album repeatedly and became captivated by it.
Coming soon: reviews of CDs from a variety of labels, including the intriguing and intriguingly-named Cryptogramophone.