by John Fordham
The Guardian
Growing into the kind of Miles Davis-sparked trumpet inspiration for the Italian jazz scene that Palle Mikkelborg has been for Denmark or Tomasz Stanko for Poland, Enrico Rava has become one of European jazz's major legends. This set follows up 2003's Easy Living, which brought a sumptuous brass-dominant small group to a mix of ambiguous, Kenny Wheeler-like music, tiptoeing tone-poetry, and nods to Ornette Coleman and the Miles Davis 1960s band.
Group-minded pianist Andrea Pozza is substituted for Stefano Bollani, and the feel is a little straight-jazzier - even if the Chet Baker vehicle The Wind has a ambient-music ghostliness in its slowly whoopy trombone countermelody. Echoes of Duke is an ecstatically riffy swinger, Serpent a spacily hypnotic, lonesome-Miles reverie, Don Cherry's Art Deco is turned into an early-jazz trumpet-trombone conversation, and there are two revisits to old Rava originals: the undulating Secrets and the Carla Bley-like Dr Ra and Mr Va. Rava's return to ECM has paid off handsomely so far.
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Showing posts with label CDs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CDs. Show all posts
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Saturday, January 13, 2007
MF Horn VI: Live at Ronnie's
By Jack Bowers
In August 2005, when Maynard Ferguson and Big Bop Nouveau recorded MF Horn VI at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London, no one could have known or even suspected that the trumpet legend would pass away one year later, shortly after a series of sold-out concerts at New York City’s Blue Note nightclub and another recording session with BBN, this one a studio date in Englewood, New Jersey.
There’s a saying about cowboys and westerners who lived life to the fullest that “they died with their boots on.” Maynard Ferguson died almost literally with his horn to his lips, which is quite appropriate, as that’s how several generations of jazz fans remember him, exuberantly leading a band while producing those incredible high notes that were not only his signature but placed him among trumpet players in a class by himself.
By the time MF Horn VI, his first live album in a dozen years, was recorded the high notes were few and far between, as Maynard let the youngsters in his band do much of the heavy lifting, but he was then 77 years old, and certainly entitled to a breather. He was smart and affluent enough to hire the best up-and-coming sidemen he could find, and modest enough to realize that people no longer expected him to shatter glass but were happy to see and hear a showman who so clearly loved what he was doing and always gave them their money’s worth in terms of decibels and excitement.
There are some talented newcomers in this edition of BBN and a few holdovers including trombonist/music director Reggie Watkins and lead trumpeter Patrick Hession. There’s even a distinguished alumnus, Denis DiBlasio, sitting in on baritone sax. One of the newbies, pianist Jeff Lashway, is a real find, while veteran drummer Stockton Helbing continues his steady improvement.
After “Blue Birdland” ushers Maynard onstage, the well-structured program opens with Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipanema” and closes with the mandatory “MF Hit Medley” (at 11:47 the album’s second-longest track). Sandwiched between them are Slide Hampton’s classic “Frame for the Blues,” the lovely Johnny Burke / Jimmy van Heusen ballad “But Beautiful” (on which Maynard is featured most prominently), Miles Davis’ fire-breathing “Milestones,” Jerome Kern/Johnny Mercer’s “I’m Old Fashioned” (featuring a dazzling four- minute intro by Lashway on which he quotes liberally from the Gershwins’ “A Foggy Day”), and a grungy Alan Baylock original, “Blues from Around Here,” on which DiBlasio unleashes his remarkable chops on the bari and wows the audience with his Clark Terry-style scat-singing.
While DiBlasio alone is worth the price of admission, there’s far more to be appreciated, not least of which is the fact that the young musicians in BBN are first-class and that their peerless leader knew how to please an audience. To the very end, Maynard Ferguson was an awe-inspiring presence, and no less so here.
Track listing: Blue Birdland; The Girl from Ipanema; Frame for the Blues; But Beautiful; Milestones; I’m Old Fashioned; Blues from Around Here; MF Hit Medley; Blue Birdland (73:40).
Personnel: Maynard Ferguson: trumpet, leader; Reggie Watkins: trombone, music director; Patrick Hession, Ernie Hammes, Peter Ferguson: trumpet; Julio Monterrey: alto sax; Matt Parker: tenor sax; Denis DiBlasio: baritone sax; Jeff Lashway: piano; Craig Butterfield: bass; Stockton Helbing: drums.
In August 2005, when Maynard Ferguson and Big Bop Nouveau recorded MF Horn VI at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London, no one could have known or even suspected that the trumpet legend would pass away one year later, shortly after a series of sold-out concerts at New York City’s Blue Note nightclub and another recording session with BBN, this one a studio date in Englewood, New Jersey.
There’s a saying about cowboys and westerners who lived life to the fullest that “they died with their boots on.” Maynard Ferguson died almost literally with his horn to his lips, which is quite appropriate, as that’s how several generations of jazz fans remember him, exuberantly leading a band while producing those incredible high notes that were not only his signature but placed him among trumpet players in a class by himself.
By the time MF Horn VI, his first live album in a dozen years, was recorded the high notes were few and far between, as Maynard let the youngsters in his band do much of the heavy lifting, but he was then 77 years old, and certainly entitled to a breather. He was smart and affluent enough to hire the best up-and-coming sidemen he could find, and modest enough to realize that people no longer expected him to shatter glass but were happy to see and hear a showman who so clearly loved what he was doing and always gave them their money’s worth in terms of decibels and excitement.
There are some talented newcomers in this edition of BBN and a few holdovers including trombonist/music director Reggie Watkins and lead trumpeter Patrick Hession. There’s even a distinguished alumnus, Denis DiBlasio, sitting in on baritone sax. One of the newbies, pianist Jeff Lashway, is a real find, while veteran drummer Stockton Helbing continues his steady improvement.
After “Blue Birdland” ushers Maynard onstage, the well-structured program opens with Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipanema” and closes with the mandatory “MF Hit Medley” (at 11:47 the album’s second-longest track). Sandwiched between them are Slide Hampton’s classic “Frame for the Blues,” the lovely Johnny Burke / Jimmy van Heusen ballad “But Beautiful” (on which Maynard is featured most prominently), Miles Davis’ fire-breathing “Milestones,” Jerome Kern/Johnny Mercer’s “I’m Old Fashioned” (featuring a dazzling four- minute intro by Lashway on which he quotes liberally from the Gershwins’ “A Foggy Day”), and a grungy Alan Baylock original, “Blues from Around Here,” on which DiBlasio unleashes his remarkable chops on the bari and wows the audience with his Clark Terry-style scat-singing.
While DiBlasio alone is worth the price of admission, there’s far more to be appreciated, not least of which is the fact that the young musicians in BBN are first-class and that their peerless leader knew how to please an audience. To the very end, Maynard Ferguson was an awe-inspiring presence, and no less so here.
Track listing: Blue Birdland; The Girl from Ipanema; Frame for the Blues; But Beautiful; Milestones; I’m Old Fashioned; Blues from Around Here; MF Hit Medley; Blue Birdland (73:40).
Personnel: Maynard Ferguson: trumpet, leader; Reggie Watkins: trombone, music director; Patrick Hession, Ernie Hammes, Peter Ferguson: trumpet; Julio Monterrey: alto sax; Matt Parker: tenor sax; Denis DiBlasio: baritone sax; Jeff Lashway: piano; Craig Butterfield: bass; Stockton Helbing: drums.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Palmieri/Lynch Album Up for Grammy
By Nick Madigan
BALTIMORE SUN
Decades ago, long before he became a powerhouse of Latin jazz and salsa, Eddie Palmieri was fired from a band for hitting the piano keys too hard.
"It was the best thing that ever happened to me," Palmieri, 70, said in a recent interview from his New York home. His dismissal, while upsetting at the time, propelled him into another band that taught him the intricacies of Cuban music.
"Cuba was always ahead in the different forms of music in the '20s, '30s and '40s, and all the dances came from there - rumba, cha cha, guaracha," said Palmieri, whose band comes to the Kimmel Center on March 2.
If Palmieri's piano playing is less violent than it was, it has lost none of its passion. Reviews for his latest album with jazz trumpet player Brian Lynch, his longtime collaborator, have been uniformly positive. This month, the album, Simpatico, was nominated for a Grammy award; if it wins at the Feb. 11 ceremony in Los Angeles, it would be Palmieri's ninth Grammy.
Such laurels were a world removed when Palmieri, who was born in New York's Spanish Harlem of Puerto Rican parents, began, at his mother's urging, taking piano lessons. He applied himself to the task, but it was the sounds in the streets, mostly Cuban mambo, that set his heart beating.
"There was music blasting out of every window, from commercial radio," Palmieri recalled of those days. "You could hear it from the bodegas while we'd be playing ball outside."
Palmieri, who took a detour into drums, and his brother, Charlie, who was nine years older and played the piano, began winning talent contests. The older boy was later hired by legendary bandleader Tito Puente, and his little brother sometimes sat in on Charlie's recording sessions, playing claves - two round, wooden sticks that are struck together for a rhythmic crack.
While prodigiously talented as a pianist, Palmieri did not - contrary to legend and his own Web site - make his performance debut at Carnegie Hall at the age of 11. He said that he played next door, in the Weil Recital Hall, and then only for an evaluation of his abilities, not as a concert.
However, Palmieri did join an uncle's band when he was 13, playing the timbales, shallow drums with metal shells. He began his professional career as a pianist in the early 1950s, and in 1961, he formed his own group, Conjunto La Perfecta. Palmieri showed his innovative spirit by hiring a trombone section in place of trumpets, a practice soon widely imitated.
"It was difficult to get trumpet players at that time to stay with a group," Palmieri said. "So I got one trombone and then another one. It was extremely unusual. After that, all the trombones came out of the pawnshops."
Palmieri's rising fame, and his exploration of Latin music's connections to jazz, elevated him to the rank of jazz greats such as Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Miles Davis, some critics say. In 1988, the Smithsonian Institution recorded a pair of Palmieri's concerts for the archive of the National Museum of American History in Washington.
BALTIMORE SUN
Decades ago, long before he became a powerhouse of Latin jazz and salsa, Eddie Palmieri was fired from a band for hitting the piano keys too hard.
"It was the best thing that ever happened to me," Palmieri, 70, said in a recent interview from his New York home. His dismissal, while upsetting at the time, propelled him into another band that taught him the intricacies of Cuban music.
"Cuba was always ahead in the different forms of music in the '20s, '30s and '40s, and all the dances came from there - rumba, cha cha, guaracha," said Palmieri, whose band comes to the Kimmel Center on March 2.
If Palmieri's piano playing is less violent than it was, it has lost none of its passion. Reviews for his latest album with jazz trumpet player Brian Lynch, his longtime collaborator, have been uniformly positive. This month, the album, Simpatico, was nominated for a Grammy award; if it wins at the Feb. 11 ceremony in Los Angeles, it would be Palmieri's ninth Grammy.
Such laurels were a world removed when Palmieri, who was born in New York's Spanish Harlem of Puerto Rican parents, began, at his mother's urging, taking piano lessons. He applied himself to the task, but it was the sounds in the streets, mostly Cuban mambo, that set his heart beating.
"There was music blasting out of every window, from commercial radio," Palmieri recalled of those days. "You could hear it from the bodegas while we'd be playing ball outside."
Palmieri, who took a detour into drums, and his brother, Charlie, who was nine years older and played the piano, began winning talent contests. The older boy was later hired by legendary bandleader Tito Puente, and his little brother sometimes sat in on Charlie's recording sessions, playing claves - two round, wooden sticks that are struck together for a rhythmic crack.
While prodigiously talented as a pianist, Palmieri did not - contrary to legend and his own Web site - make his performance debut at Carnegie Hall at the age of 11. He said that he played next door, in the Weil Recital Hall, and then only for an evaluation of his abilities, not as a concert.
However, Palmieri did join an uncle's band when he was 13, playing the timbales, shallow drums with metal shells. He began his professional career as a pianist in the early 1950s, and in 1961, he formed his own group, Conjunto La Perfecta. Palmieri showed his innovative spirit by hiring a trombone section in place of trumpets, a practice soon widely imitated.
"It was difficult to get trumpet players at that time to stay with a group," Palmieri said. "So I got one trombone and then another one. It was extremely unusual. After that, all the trombones came out of the pawnshops."
Palmieri's rising fame, and his exploration of Latin music's connections to jazz, elevated him to the rank of jazz greats such as Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Miles Davis, some critics say. In 1988, the Smithsonian Institution recorded a pair of Palmieri's concerts for the archive of the National Museum of American History in Washington.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Jazz Trumpet Lesson #1
As an improviser, one of my main goals is to be able to play what I hear immediately. This is the basis of my improvisation education.
An improviser is a type of composer. One of the most important things a composer/improviser can do is to listen to as much music as possible and learn how to translate what he or she hears into a performance or composition. This will help immensely when one attempts to translate one's own ideas into a performance or composition.
You can start to develop your translating abilities by mimicking recorded sounds that are easy to recognize, such as major scales or blues scales.
Your first assignment is to learn and perform as little as two or as many as all choruses of Miles Davis' solo on "Trane's Blues" by listening to the recording, on the CD Workin'. If you do not have this recording, please purchase it here.
Miles uses notes from the C major scale and the C blues scale throughout.
C Major: C D E F G A B C
C Blues: C Eb F F# G Bb C
Listen carefully to each phrase as many times as needed. Practice each phrase on your instrument and then play along with Miles. Try to mimic everything exactly as Miles plays it -the rhythm, articulation, style, dynamics, everything. Do not worry about writing anything down. It is more important to listen and play back at this point.
If this solo is too difficult for you, please try learning the melody "Sonnymoon for Two" by Sonny Rollins. The CD, "The Best of Sonny Rollins" on Blue Note has a good recording of this as well as others. The melody is mostly a decending blues scale (minus one note) and repeats itself three times. Please do not use written music (you must rely upon your ears).
Have fun and please share your comments below.
An improviser is a type of composer. One of the most important things a composer/improviser can do is to listen to as much music as possible and learn how to translate what he or she hears into a performance or composition. This will help immensely when one attempts to translate one's own ideas into a performance or composition.
You can start to develop your translating abilities by mimicking recorded sounds that are easy to recognize, such as major scales or blues scales.
Your first assignment is to learn and perform as little as two or as many as all choruses of Miles Davis' solo on "Trane's Blues" by listening to the recording, on the CD Workin'. If you do not have this recording, please purchase it here.
Miles uses notes from the C major scale and the C blues scale throughout.
C Major: C D E F G A B C
C Blues: C Eb F F# G Bb C
Listen carefully to each phrase as many times as needed. Practice each phrase on your instrument and then play along with Miles. Try to mimic everything exactly as Miles plays it -the rhythm, articulation, style, dynamics, everything. Do not worry about writing anything down. It is more important to listen and play back at this point.
If this solo is too difficult for you, please try learning the melody "Sonnymoon for Two" by Sonny Rollins. The CD, "The Best of Sonny Rollins" on Blue Note has a good recording of this as well as others. The melody is mostly a decending blues scale (minus one note) and repeats itself three times. Please do not use written music (you must rely upon your ears).
Have fun and please share your comments below.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Recommended Recordings
Study In Brown by Clifford Brown
Kind of Blue by Miles Davis
Hub Tones by Freddie Hubbard
Hot Fives & Sevens by Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong - Verve Jazz Masters by Louis Armstrong
Eternal Triangle by Dizzy Gillespie
Sidewinder by Lee Morgan
Caravan by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
Roy & Diz by Dizzy Gillespie and Roy Eldridge