{"id":4970,"date":"2013-08-06T19:19:49","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T02:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=4970"},"modified":"2013-08-06T19:19:49","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T02:19:49","slug":"recent-listening-denny-zeitlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2013\/08\/recent-listening-denny-zeitlin\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Listening: Denny Zeitlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denny Zeitlin<\/strong>, Both\/And<\/em><\/a> (Sunnyside)<\/p>\n

One-man bands have come a long way since 1941, when Sidney Bechet recorded \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Sheik of Araby.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> Playing clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones, piano, bass and drums, Bechet and the RCA engineers laboriously added an instrument in each of a succession of takes until the band was all present and accounted for on one master 78 rpm disc. Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s digital electronics simplify the process and \"Zeitlin<\/a>expand the possibilities, but one thing has not changed since Bechet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s painstaking feat—the need for virtuosity by the performer and the recording engineer. For the first six tracks in Both\/And<\/em>, Zeitlin fills both roles. He records on acoustic and electric pianos and creates synthesizer sounds that are uncannily like those of brass, reed, string and rhythm instruments and a choir. In the five sections of the kaleidoscopic \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Monk-y Business Revisited,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he shares producing and recording credit with electronic music pioneer Patrick Gleeson. <\/p>\n

Zeitlin, a psychiatrist, made his first major impact when he was a medical student. As the pianist on Jeremy Steig\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Flute Fever<\/em>, his playing, in particular his solo on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oleo,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d came in for enthusiastic critical notice. Flute Fever<\/em> has never been reissued on CD. He followed with four trio albums for Columbia that established him as one of the leading young pianists in jazz.
\nIn the late 1960s and through much of the seventies, Zeitlin changed direction. On his website, he describes the shift: <\/p>\n

I withdrew from public performance to research possibilities in electronic music, hire engineers to build sound-altering equipment, modify existing keyboards and synthesizers, build systems and racks, and find kindred musical spirits. What emerged was an evolving set-up that looked like a 747 cockpit of 7+ keyboards and synths, myriad processors and pedals, (and) what seemed like miles of connectors\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some of Zeitlin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s music from his first electronic period is on Expansion<\/em><\/a>, an album\"DZ_expansion\"<\/a> that he recorded and released on his own after record companies turned it down, even as his trio records continued to sell. There is more of his electronic work in the soundtrack he composed for the 1978 remake of the science fiction movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers<\/em><\/a>. His work in the film brought praise from critics including Paulene Kael of The New Yorker<\/em>, who wrote, “…dazzling score…the music is a large contributor to the jokes and terrors.” Zeitlin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s demanding involvement with the movie drained him of desire to do further motion picture writing and performing. Through the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc80s, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc90s and into the new century he has concentrated largely on acoustic piano while maintaining his day gigs; psychiatric practice and university teaching. He has chronicled his work on the Steinway in several recent releases on Sunnyside Records. <\/p>\n

In Both\/And<\/em>, Zeitlin returns to the electronic arena with a collection so finely crafted that his means of producing it are considerations secondary to the success of the music as<\/em> music. A piece called \"Zeitlin<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Meteorology\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is a meditation on Weather Report, the group in which Joe Zawinul pioneered the synthesizer in jazz. It opens with Zeitlin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s convincing approximation of Jaco Pastorius\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s electric bass. The bass provides the backbone and continuity of the piece. Once the atmosphere is established, the listener\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attention goes to the quality and content of the solos and ensembles. What Zeitlin achieves in integrating the elements could have come only through meticulous labor in the studio, but in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Meteorology\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and throughout the CD the music imparts the impression of spontaneity. That is as true of the mysterious \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dawn,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with its intimations of Alan Hovahness<\/a> or Kryzsztof Penderecki<\/a> abstraction, as of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153trombone\u00e2\u20ac\u009d like a rampaging bull elephant in the jungle of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tiger, Tiger.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n

Zeitlin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Steinway is prominent in a ballad, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Kathryn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Song,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d interacting with a string orchestra in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dystopian Uprising\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Monk-y Business Revisited.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d If only real string sections could achieve the phrasing and swing feeling that Zeitlin gives the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153strings\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Into The Funk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d section of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Monk-y Business.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an orchestra of Harry Lookofskys<\/a>. As for percussion, if I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that this project is essentially a one-man operation, I would suspect Zeitlin and Gleeson of editing a live drummer and a trap set into the final mix.<\/p>\n

This is a substantial album, fascinating for its musicianship, variety, good humor and the multifaceted talents of Denny Zeitlin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Denny Zeitlin, Both\/And (Sunnyside) One-man bands have come a long way since 1941, when Sidney Bechet recorded \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Sheik of Araby.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Playing clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones, piano, bass and drums, Bechet and the RCA engineers laboriously added an instrument in each of a succession of takes until the band was all present and accounted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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-4970","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\/4970","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=4970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}