{"id":11145,"date":"2019-05-18T22:56:10","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T05:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=11145"},"modified":"2019-07-02T22:20:30","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T05:20:30","slug":"recent-listening-zeitlin-remembers-davis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2019\/05\/recent-listening-zeitlin-remembers-davis\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Listening: Zeitlin Remembers Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denny Zeitlin<\/strong> Solo Piano: Remembering Miles<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For the most recent of his annual solo concerts at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, California, pianist Denny Zeitlin’s subject was Miles Davis. The recital before the Piedmont’s customary audience of close listeners covered several eras of the trumpeter’s career. Davis composed few major jazz standards, and he had collaborators for some of those. In the recording, Zeitlin’s repertoire begins with one of the most famous pieces attributed to Davis. “Solar” was in fact written in 1947 by guitarist Chuck Wayne as “Sonny” and named for trumpeter Sonny Berman. It is one of Davis’s most famous appropriations. Zeitlin eases into it, but soon employs his formidable left hand to fill out the sound and roll into minor-key explorations, to ”\u00a0the advantage of its harp-like qualities, then modulates into a series of commentaries that come in fragments of left-hand flourishes and, ultimately, in final thoughts that incorporate a stunning decrescendo.<\/p>\n

It is all but certain that Bill Evans was a major contributor to the composition of “Flamenco Sketches,” a modal masterpiece that was a highlight among highlights in Davis’s amazingly successful Kind Of Blue<\/em>, which remains one of the best-selling jazz albums ever. Zeitlin is relaxed and harmonically subtle throughout this piece, which is welcome as one of the album’s longer tracks.”Tomaas,” a Davis collaboration with bassist Marcus Miller, finds Zeitlin at first reaching inside the piano to take advantage of its harp-like qualities, then modulating into series of commentaries that come in fragments of left-hand comments and, ultimately, in final thoughts that incorporate a stunning decrescendo.<\/p>\n

Finally, I must mention that Zeitlin concludes with a pair of performances based in the heart and lifeblood of jazz: first, the energy ”\u00a0that he applies to the “I Got Rhythm” changes of Davis’s “The Theme;” second, the drive, pzazz and humor with which he invests the good old b-flat blues, in this case a piece that Davis recorded in 1954 and titled “Weirdo.” Zeitlin wraps it up in keeping with the title. The ending is ever so slightly weird.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Denny Zeitlin Solo Piano: Remembering Miles For the most recent of his annual solo concerts at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, California, pianist Denny Zeitlin’s subject was Miles Davis. The recital before the Piedmont’s customary audience of close listeners covered several eras of the trumpeter’s career. Davis composed few major jazz standards, and he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}