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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Blue Note’s Birthday

January 6, 2009 by Doug Ramsey

Today is the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records, and — what a coincidence — I have at hand an advance CD by the Blue Note 7. That is the all-star band of Blue Note artists on BN logo.jpgthe verge of a three months tour to celebrate the longevity of a company that has made a difference in music. The tour opens Thursday evening at the Moore Theater in Seattle. Friday, the band will be across the Cascade mountains in Yakima, Washington, at The Seasons Performance Hall. I will be there, listening intently after having the pleasure of introducing the band. It is my intention to give you a report reasonably soon after the event. For a list of cities and dates of the tour, go here. 

With pianist Bill Charlap at the helm, the other all-stars are guitarist Peter Bernstein, tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, drummer Lewis Nash, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, bassist Peter Washington and alto saxophonist Steve Wilson–a cross-section of the cream of the modern jazz mainstream. Their new CD, titled Mosaic, includes that Cedar Walton composition and

Thumbnail image for Blue Note 7.jpg

pieces by Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk and other musicians associated with Blue Note through the years. A companion disc, contains the original recordings of the pieces from the Blue Note archive by Monk, Hancock, Joe Henderson, Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner, Grant Green, Horace Silver and Bobby Hutcherson. 
As I have emphasized here on more than one occasion, medium-sized bands can provide some of the greatest satisfactions in jazz. The arrangements of eight modern classics by members of the band and pianist Renee Rosnes (Mrs. Charlap) add to the successes in the genre. They respect the originals while introducing new touches–a bit of note-bending in the line of Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance,” the full-bodied orchestration of Grant Green’s theme in “Idle Moments,” a feeling of suspended animation leading into the main section of Joe Henderson’s “Inner Urge.” As for soloists, these are some of the best of their generation. They perform accordingly. Payton 

Payton.jpg

impresses me more with the content of his improvisation on this record than anything I have heard from him in years. His solos here have the story-telling quality that separates first-tier jazz soloists from the herd. Charlap achieved that literary attribute long ago, but

Charlap 2.jpg

on some of these tracks he gets into an edginess, particularly on Monk’s “Criss-Cross,” that adds an element he has seldom displayed. Maybe it’s Monk’s spirit that brings out chance-taking; Payton and Wilson also dive in with abandon on this piece. 
Well, it’s all good, and I look forward to hearing what the Blue Note 7 have added to the repertoire since they made this album last year.

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Comments

  1. Scott Magill says

    January 9, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    Their concert in Seattle last night was great. They played seven of the eight tracks on the CD excluding “Search for Peace”. In addition, arrangements of Freddie Hubbard’s “Hub-Tones,” Dexter Gordon’s “Soy Califa,” and Bobby Hutcherson’s “Bouquet,” were played. The crowd’s enthusiasm brought the band back on stage for an encore of Lee Morgan’s minor blues “Party Time.”

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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