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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Other Places: Jazz Profiles

April 23, 2008 by Doug Ramsey

In his new blog Jazz Profiles, Steve Cerrra is running a multi-part series on the late pianist Michel Petrucciani. In the current installment, Cerra discusses how during his period with Blue Note Records, Petrucciani dealt with his Bill Evans influence:

To hear a very specific example of this stylistic transition in the making, compare Michel’s scorching treatment of “Night and Day”, in which he puts on a dazzling display of “pianism,” with the searching and tentative version offered by Evans of this song on the Everybody Digs Bill Evans, his second date for Riverside.

Of course, Evans was still in the process of discovering his systems of voicings on his version of the Cole Porter classic whereas Michel comes to this system 30 years later with it available as a fully developed basis for harmonic substitutions while playing this tune. Nevertheless, more and more, throughout “The Blue Note Years,” one can discern the advent of Michel’s unique Jazz voice.

To read the whole thing, go here.

Cerra has initiated an occasional series on, of all peculiar topics, jazz critics. He began it with a lovely piece about Whitney Balliett. Now, arriving at desperation early in the game, he has resorted to a sidebar about the proprietor of Rifftides. I am mystified and flattered.

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Comments

  1. Jon Foley says

    April 23, 2008 at 8:29 pm

    A nice appreciation of you by Cerra, and well deserved. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that throughout Cerra’s piece and, alas, in yours, the name of the master of jazz writing, Whitney Balliett, is misspelled “Balliet.” Tsk, tsk.
    (Yarggh. I hate it when that happens. I fixed my goof. I’ll alert Steve Cerra. Thanks, Jon. — DR)

  2. Steve Cerra says

    April 24, 2008 at 9:20 am

    Thanks, Jon, for catching this egregious mistake on my part; and to think that I had about a half dozen books with Whitney’s last name plastered all over them around me as I was writing this piece! I must have gotten up over 5 wpm in my typing and just lost sight of the correct spelling of Mr. Balliett’s last name. Perhaps I should try Gene Lees as my next “Notable Critic,” although with my luck it will come out as “Gene Lee.”

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, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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