‘Explaining What’s Hidden’ from alto saxophonist David Binney’s 2009 album ‘Third Occasion’, with Craig Taborn piano, Scott Colley bass, Brian Blade drums, Ambrose Akinmusire trumpet, Brad Mason trumpet/flugelhorn and Corey King trombone.
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A Jazz Thread
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Prompted by Tony C 's mention of Marcin Wasilewski, here's something that I've had it in mind to post for a while now. Polish pianist Dominik Wania released 'Lonely Shadows' last year, an album of solo piano pieces that is absolutely beautiful. This is the title track.
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Sticking with the piano trios this morning, this is ‘Jumpin’ On Waves’ from Belgian pianist Jef Neve’s 2017 album ‘Spirit Control’, with Lennart Heyndels bass, Jens Bouttery drums and towards the end of the track, a small string section.
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Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea deliver a duo masterclass in jazz piano and the art of improvisation. 'Maiden Voyage' recorded live in Frankfurt on their 1978 'An Evening With Herbie Hancock & Chick Corea' tour (which was also the title of the subsequent live album). Like an idiot I passed up the opportunity to catch them on the London leg of the tour, but I couldn't find anyone interested in going with me and I didn't want to go on my own. Sigh.
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“Bill had this quiet fire that I loved on piano. The way he approached it, the sound he got was like crystal notes or sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall. I had to change the way the band sounded again for Bill's style by playing different tunes, softer ones at first.” (Miles Davis)
Had he done little else in his musical career, playing on two of the albums commonly regarded as landmark recordings of the genre would have assured Bill Evans’ place in jazz history. ‘Kind Of Blue’ (1959) is said to be the highest selling jazz album of all time, a status that may be partially due to its reputation as the jazz album enjoyed by people who don’t usually like that sort of thing. Evans supplied two compositions and worked closely with Miles to establish the overall sound, but on release his name wasn’t in the writing credits – an injustice that prevailed until relatively recently, when he was properly and officially acknowledged as ‘co-author’ of ‘Blue In Green’ and ‘Flamenco Sketches’. This is ‘Blue In Green’, with Miles Davis, Bill Evans, John Coltrane tenor saxophone, Paul Chambers bass and Jimmy Cobb drums.
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‘Sunday At The Village Vanguard’ (1961) by the Bill Evans Trio is the gold standard of jazz piano trio recordings, and the sound of three musicians perfectly attuned with one another. It’s a particularly poignant album as 25-year-old bassist Scott LeFaro was killed in a motor accident just 11 days after the recording. LeFaro was already making waves with his double bass playing in the same way that Jaco Pastorius did a decade-and-a-half later with the bass guitar, freeing it from a purely rhythmic role and establishing it as a melodic voice in its own right. He was the perfect fit for Evans and although the pianist subsequently worked with several other fine bassists – most notably Eddie Gomez - nothing quite matched the beauty of those early albums with LeFaro. This is ‘Alice In Wonderland’ with the great Paul Motian on drums. I used to be irritated by the clink of glasses and audience conversation that you can occasionally hear in the background, but now I think it adds to the ambience and the sense of this being a historical document.
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Mark ‘Marc Mac’ Clair and Denis ‘Dego’ McFarlane’s 4hero might initially seem an odd choice for a jazz thread for anyone familiar only with their early techno / drum ‘n’ bass material, but by their third album, 1998’s ‘Two Pages’, they were incorporating elements of jazz, soul and funk in their sound and using actual musicians in the studio, many of them from a jazz background. The album is very much a mix of old and new styles, with half-a-dozen songs harkening back to their drum ‘n’ bass days, and the remaining majority embracing the newer sounds that 4hero were largely to pursue from that point forward. This is ‘Third Stream’, featuring Chris Bowden saxophone, Niles Hailstone trumpet, Andy Rogers trombone, Judith Goodman French horn, Andy Hamill double bass, Leon Mar bass guitar, Luke Parkhouse drums, Face vocals and a small string section.
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From 4hero’s 2001 album, 'Creating Patterns’, this is ‘Blank Cells’, featuring Nathan Haines saxophone/flute, Brad Somatik bass and Luke Parkhouse drums. It wasn’t included on the original release and appeared only as a bonus track on some of the later versions. It’s a shame that more people didn’t get to hear it as I think it’s one of their best songs.
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Finally, from 2007’s ‘Play With The Changes’, this is ‘The Awakening’, with Marc Mac on all keyboards, Andy Hamill bass, Luke Parkhouse drums, Brad Munn flute and the wonderful Ursula Rucker vocals (her lyrics even more apt today than they were 14 years ago). Rucker is well-worth investigating further if you are unaware of her work – particularly the debut album ‘Supa Sista’, which is unbelievably good.
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Like a few of his 70’s contemporaries, and in his case influenced by ‘Mahavishnu’ John McLaughlin, Carlos Santana dabbled for a while with Indian religion/mysticism, eventually becoming a devotee of guru Shri Chimnoy and adopting the forename ‘Devadip’. That eventually led to the recording of one of his more interesting albums, ‘Illuminations’, a collaboration with ‘Turiya’ Alice Coltrane, that was released in 1974. This is ‘Angel Of Air / Angel Of Water’, featuring Santana on guitar, Coltrane harp (and string arrangements), Tom Coster electric piano, Jules Broussard flute and soprano saxophone, Dave Holland bass, Jack DeJohnette cymbals and a string section.
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That gives me an opportunity to post one of the great live performances – Santana at Woodstock on 16th August 1969. Every time I see this it brings it home just how young they were at the time – drummer Michael Shrieve was only 20 and Santana himself just 22. It’s very possible that they would still have had the same amount of success if promoter Bill Graham hadn’t hustled them onto the bill, but their barnstorming Woodstock appearance at a point where they were still relatively unknown outside San Francisco, was the springboard that set them on the way and their debut album, released two weeks later, went Top 10 in the US. This is the final song from their set, a fiery version of ‘Soul Sacrifice’, with Santana, Shrieve, Gregg Rolie organ, David Brown bass, Michael Carabello percussion and Jose Chepito Areas percussion.
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