A welcome surprise: I had no idea that veteran pianist Fred Hersch and the relatively new piano star Sullivan Fortner had worked together. As it turns out, they made a joint appearance at Jazz At Lincoln Center in 2016. Here they are on that occasion in a duet on Ornette Coleman’s 1959 composition “Turnaround,” first heard that year on Coleman’s album Tomorrow Is The Question. In the photos and the video, Hersch is on your left, Fortner on your right

                                  

Thanks to a resourceful YouTube contributor, Scott Morgan, for posting that video.

You’ll find the Ornette Coleman quintet’s original recording of “Turnaround” here.

The extracurricular, non-Rifftides assignment that I mentioned in the February 2nd post is done, barring revisions. As mentioned, it involves notes for a CD box set of everything that trumpeter and singer Chet Baker recorded for Riverside Records in the late 1950s. Baker’s Riverside association was packed with problems for him and for producer Orrin Keepnews, but it brought him together with a dozen or so of the finest jazz musicians of the era. Among them are Bill Evans, Philly Joe Jones, Al Haig, Paul Chambers, Kenny Drew and Zoot Sims. The box will include several alternate takes and outtakes.

If the artists’ names above pique your interest, allow me to pique it further with a couple of samples that have shown up on the web.

Michel Legrand, the pianist, arranger and prolific composer of film scores, died today at his home in France. He was 86. Dozens of Legrand’s melodies became popular hits, among them “The Windmills Of Your Mind,” “What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?” and “Watch What Happens.” The wide range of performers who collaborated with him includes such diverse stars as Miles Davis, Barbara Streisand and Kiri Te Kanawa. Early on, Legrand was the piano accompanist for Sarah Vaughan and Lena Horne, among others.

Legrand’s ability as an arranger was on full display in his 1958 album Legrand Jazz. In it he created extensive settings for jazz artists who were at their peaks in the 1950s. Among them were Davis, Bill Evans and John Coltrane when they were all in Davis’s sextet. Art Farmer, Phil Woods, Jimmy Cleveland and Donald Byrd are also featured in the album. For Earl Hines’s “Rosetta,” Legrand made an arrangement that featured trombonists Frank Rehak, Billy Byers, Jimmy Cleveland and Eddie Bert. Tenor saxophonist Ben Webster follows the trombone fiesta with a solo that amounts to a two-chorus reduction of his powerful, incomparable style. Unfortunately, Columbia Records, or someone with a claim to control of the video, has made it unavailable. To see the album and hear “Rosetta,” go here and enjoy Big Ben and a marvelous Legrand arrangement.

For an article tracing Legrand’s career, see John Anderson’s thorough obituary in today’s New York Times.

Michel Legrand, RIP

Helen Sung: Sung With Words (Stricker Street Records)

In this poetry and jazz collection Helen Sung further validates her position as one of the most accomplished pianists In the New York jazz community, which has an abundance of fine pianists. The quintet supporting Sung thrives on her arrangements and accompaniments as she improvises on themes suggested by seven poems of poet Dana Gioia, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and—not so coincidentally—the brother of jazz writer and influential blogger Ted Gioia. Sung’s improvisation on “Too Bad,” is one instance of her solo excellence. Another is her instrumental “Lament For Kalief Browder.“ inspired by the case of a young black man from the Bronx who was charged with theft, spent three years in oppressive custody on Rikers Island, then committed suicide. Despite the sadness and injustice of Browder’s story, Sung’s arrangement, the harmonic purity she gives the female vocal backing, John Ellis’s bass clarinet interlude and the energy of drummer Kendrick Scott’s interjections create a kind of stark beauty. Ellis is equally impressive in his tenor and soprano saxophone appearances.

The high quality of the instrumentalists and singers who support Sung makes this what might fairly be called an all-star album. Trumpeter Ingrid Jensen is at the top of her game, soloing with fluidity and daring into the highest register of the horn. Drummer Scott, bassist Reuben Rogers and percussionist Samuel Torres are solid and supportive throughout. Christie Sashiell has the vocal on Sung’s mysterious “Touch.” She, Jean Baylor, Carolyn Leonhart and Charnee Wade—sometimes singly, sometimes combined—are guest vocalists. Their work gives the album atmospheres that help to account for its variety and spirit. Sashiell and Wade collaborate on the amusing “Mean What You Say,” Gioa’s and Sung’s wry social commentary closing a challenging and rewarding album.

Way North: Fearless And Kind (M A P L)

Way North’s three Canadians and a New Yorker are reminiscent of the kind of ensemble you might find playing on a corner in the French Quarter of New Orleans. For all of their sophisticated musicianship, that’s the kind of jovial feeling the quartet summons in tenor saxophonist Petr Cancura’s “Boll Weevil,” trumpeter Rebecca Hennessy’s “Fearless And Kind” and several other rollicking pieces in this carefree collection. The title track maintains the feel-good atmosphere while at the same time giving the proceeding an almost (but not quite) somber cast. That is also true of Way North’s approach to a brief exposition of Jelly Roll Morton’s “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” which includes growls by Hennessy that seem to be inherited more or less directly from Bolden’s trumpet successor King Oliver. Solemnity dissolves when they move into their second Morton tune, “King Porter Stomp.” Bassist Michael Herring and drummer Richie Barshay—the American member—generate enthusiastic swing as they collaborate behind Cancura’s and Hennessy’s solos on “Porter.” Herring’s solos on that piece and on Hennessy’s “Inchworm” are highlights of those tracks. Hennessy’s trumpet work throughout further illuminates why she is enjoying growing regard in Canadian jazz circles. She is one to keep an ear on.

For Rifftides reviews of other recent recordings from Canada, go here.

The 30th annual presentation of the Sacred Music of Duke Ellington took place on December 28, 2018 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle before a capacity audience.  Featuring vocal soloists Stephen Newby (pictured left) and Nichol Veneé Eskrdge (pictured right), the Northwest Chamber Chorus and the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra conducted by Michael Brockman, Ellington’s rich score filled every corner of the great cathedral.  The concert was recorded for radio and Part 1 will be broadcast on Jazz Northwest on Sunday, January 13 at 2 PM Pacific time on 88.5 KNKX, and simulcast worldwide on knkx.org.   Part 2 will air on the same program on February 3.

Duke Ellington composed music for three Sacred Music concerts late in his life, premiering in 1965, 1967 and 1973.  The music was performed in great cathedrals in San Francisco, New York, London and elsewhere.  New music was mixed with a few Ellington classics in appropriate new arrangements to make up the suites. This Seattle performance draws from all three suites.

SRJO Ellington Sacred Concert at St. Marks Cathedral

(Photos: Jim Levitt)

We learned today that trombonist Urbie Green died last Monday, December 31, in the Poconos mountain region that he called home for many years. He was 92. A musician idolized by his contemporaries—and particularly by fellow players of the trombone—Green’s earliest big band years included stretches with Frankie Carle and Gene Krupa. His work with Woody Herman in the early 1950s brought him widespread attention and frequent mention in jazz polls and surveys. Green was a member of the all-star band that played at the White House at an elaborate party that President Richard Nixon gave Duke Ellington in 1969 on Ellington’s 70th birthday. Much of the music that night was captured for Blue Note Records. Ufortunately, someone–presumably Blue Note–has blocked us from embedding videos containing that performance and others. We see Green on the right above, on that occasion with fellow trombonist J.J. Johnson. To hear them collaborating—raucously—on a solo in Gerry Mulligan’s vigorous arrangement of Ellington’s “Prelude To A Kiss,” click here

Green solos at that White House occasion on another Ellington standard, “I Got It Bad.” Click here for the audio.

Urbie Green—reminding us why he continues to inspire trombonists around the world, and is likely to do so for decades. RIP.

Quotes To Inspire A Lovely 2019

New Year’s Day – Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. — Mark  Twain

The only way to spend New Year’s Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears. — W.H. Auden

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go. — Brooks Atkinson

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions. —Joey Adams

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice. —T.S. Eliot

Now’s The Time —Charlie Parker

Plans have changed for a service in memory of trumpeter Roy Hargrove, who died on November 3.  Frank Stewart of Jazz at Lincoln Center sent the announcement:

The life and work of Roy Hargrove will be honored at a musical celebration on Tuesday, January 8  at Jazz At Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall on Broadway at 60^thStreet, New York, New York. Doors will open at 6:30 pm and the event will begin promptly at 7pm. Originally scheduled to take place at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the festivities will take place at Jazz at Lincoln Center after the conclusion of the 2019 Jazz Congress.

Rifftides readers have asked the staff to again present Jack Brownlow’s Christmas recital.  It first appeared here in December of 2015. We are delighted to do so. To see the post and hear his music, just click here and enjoy it.

Merry Christmas 2018.

It can be discouraging, but we are resigned to keeping you up to date on the deaths of prominent musicians. The latest bad news is about the pianist John Williams, who died On December 14 in Wilmington, North Carolina. Williams achieved substantial renown in the 1950s for his work with several prominent leaders and for leading his own trio. Inevitably, he was occasionally misidentified as another John Williams who was once a jazz pianist but became known primarily as a composer for movies and a conductor of pops orchestras. The jazz John Williams died following one of several bad falls at home. In a post 7 years ago we addressed the name confusion and provided a bit of Williams’s history.

(From the Rifftides archive: January 22, 2011)

The man on the left  is John Thomas Williams, the pianist who worked with Stan Getz, Bob Brookmeyer, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and Cannonball Adderley in the ’50s. The man on the right is John Towner Williams, who had a brief career as a jazz pianist and went on to Star Wars and The Boston Pops, among other associations.

For a few decades, the jazz John Williams took side trips into successful careers in banking and government. He lives in Florida and, at 82, still plays gigs, mostly solo piano. When I spoke with him this morning, he sounded content, although he allowed that he wouldn’t mind having the “No” John Williams’s royalty income. To further dissipate confusion, here’s a rerun of a Rifftides piece about him that first appeared on April 18, 2006. It contains a link to a reissue CD of Williams’ widely praised trio records.

THAT John Williams

During long stretches of 1953 and ’54, John Williams was the pianist in Stan Getz’s quintet and quartet. Wiliams is often described in biographies as a disciple of Bud Powell who was also influenced by Horace Silver. That is true. It is also true that oxygen influences flame, a fact that tells us nothing about the differences among flames. In the population of pianists influenced by Powell and Silver, Williams was identifiable by a keyboard touch that produced a spikey, percussive, rollicking forward motion, an infectious swing. Almost in contradiction, at the same time he somehow achieved a smoothness of phrasing that invested his improvised lines with the logic of inevitability. He managed to make his listeners anticipate what was coming in a solo and yet surprise them when he got there.

Williams’ first album under his own name was John Williams, a ten-inch LP on the Emarcy label, recorded in 1954. His trio had Bill Anthony on bass and the unique Detroit drummer Frank Isola, fellow members of the Stan Getz group. Williams jokes today that he often wonders who got the third copy of the album after he and his mother each bought one. It may not have been a big seller, but it quickly became a favorite of musicians and, after Emarcy pulled it, of collectors. In the 1990s, a broker of rare LPs who sold to Japanese LP zealots told me that a mint copy of John Williams was going in Japan for upwards of $300. I blush to confess that I sold him my beat-up copy for considerably less than that, making him wait while I first copied it to tape. As we listened, I hummed along to Wiliams’ solos, so embedded in my brain had they become over four decades of nearly wearing out the album.

It was a puzzle, given the LP’s iconic status, why Emarcy did not reissue it on CD, and why Verve did not bring it out after the company acquired the Emarcy catalog. A good guess is that the decision was made by accountants. Time has cured that ill. Copyright laws in Spain declare that after fifty years, recorded material is fair game (I’m not sure that’s the exact wording of the law). So, the resourceful Fresh Sound label has put on one CD John Williams and the pianist’s second Emarcy album, a twelve-inch LP called John Williams Trio, recorded in 1955. This belated event probably doesn’t do much for the inflated price of the original LPs, but it is a boon to the substantial number of Williams fans who have been clamoring for a reissue. It may also gain him new fans.

The second album, done in three sessions with shifting personnel among bassists and drummers, doesn’t have quite the concentrated charm of the ten-inch 1954 session. That is in part, I suspect, because Frank Isola is on only one track. Nonetheless, it has wonderful moments. Taken together, the twenty tracks capture John Williams when his playing was full of freshness, vigor and peppery lyricism. By all accounts, including the evidence of an appearance with Marian McPartland on Piano Jazz, it still is. He has never stopped playing, but he took a few decades off to become a banker and, for twenty years, a city commissioner of Hollywood, Florida. In conversation, Williams tends to deprecate his playing in the 1950s as inadequate, an evaluation that flies in the face of the wisdom of his employers–StanGetz, Bob Brookmeyer, Cannonball Adderley, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims among them–and of listeners who have been stimulated by his work for half a century.

To remind you of John Williams’ work, or familiarize you with it when he was at his peak of recognition, let’s listen to him with his trio in the early ’50s. Ernie Farrow is the bassist, Frank Isola the drummer. They play Dizzy Gillespie’s “Manteca.” To hear it, go here.

John Williams, RIP

Sorry to hear of the passing of Nancy Wilson. She was 81 and died yesterday at her home north of Los Angeles in the California desert community of Pioneertown. The singer achieved fame in the 1960s after Cannonball Adderley heard her in a Columbus, Ohio, club and recommended her to Capitol Records. An album she made with Adderley and his quintet became one of her most popular and has remained so for decades. Nearly as successful was her album with the George Shearing Quintet. For a summary of her career and a stunning latterday photograph of Ms. Wilson performing, see this Associated Press obituary.

Capitol Records, an agent, a manager or a bookkeeper seems to have prohibited the embedding of Ms. Wilson’s videos, so we’re unable to bring you one. To hear hear a track or two from the album with Cannonball Adderley, go here .

Nancy Wilson, RIP

Laura Dickinson 17: Auld Lang Syne (Music & Mirror Records)

Auld Lang Syne finds the veteran Los Angeles studio singer leading a big band and applying her power to seasonal songs. The fullness and accuracy of her high range is impressive throughout the album, nowhere more than in the beloved Robert Burns title song. On that track and elsewhere she harmonizes to great effect with a second female voice, presumably her own. Trumpeter Kye Palmer, pianist Alan Steinberger and guitarist Andrew Synoweic get credit for some of the collection’s fine instrumental solo work. Other soloists go uncredited. Dickinson gives Irving Berlin’s 1953 “Love, You Didn’t Do Right By Me” what may be its most robust version since Rosemary Clooney debuted the song in the 1954 film White Christmas. “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is notable for Dickinson’s touching restraint, pianist Steinberger’s harmonies in the accompaniment, and their negotiation of a demanding key change.

David Ian: Vintage Christmas (Prescott Records)

The Canadian pianist and his trio impart a light touch to a collection that encompasses classics from “Good King Wenceslas” to “Oh Come All Ye Faithful. Bassist John Estes and drummer Josh Hunt blend nicely with Ian as he caresses one familiar Christmas tune after another. Hunt’s work with brushes is firm without intrusiveness, and Estes solos with conviction, notably so on the opening “Deck The Halls.” My impression from the package and Prescott’s website publicity is that Ian has considerably expanded the amount of music in this charming album since its original issue a year or so ago.

Jake Ehrenreich, with the Roger Kellaway Trio, A Treausury of Jewish Christmas Songs (Ehrenreich)

It may not have occurred to you that Jews wrote many of your favorite Christmas songs. It occurred to Jake Ehrenreich. His album glories in what they created. The parents who raised Ehrenreich in Brooklyn were holocaust survivors. He grew up to be a performer on Broadway and the author of a best selling book, <em>A Jew Grows In Brooklyn</em>. The songs he gathered are by Irving Berlin, Julie Styne, Johnny Mandel, Mel Tormé and others of Jewish heritage. Not to mention Vince Guaraldi (wait a minute, how’d that San Francisco Italian get in there? Oh, right; he wrote “Christmas Time Is Here”.) Ehrenreich’s voice has a veiled quality not unlike Tony Bennett’s. He sings with great enthusiasm and only now and then a hint of a Brooklyn accent. His accompanists are pianist Roger Kellaway, guitarist Bruce Forman, bassist Dan Lutz—the Roger Kellaway Trio—with additional percussion by Kevin Winard.