"Standards in Silhouettes" - the Kenton-Mathieu Alliance

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“... the sound of Kenton is the battle cry of a squadron of stratosphere-scraping trumpeters blowing with such fury that athletic cups must have been far more necessary than cup mutes; the grunt of a platoon of trombones exploring a hundred new degrees between low and very low; the soaring and searing sax stars, especially his succession of alto giants, who defined themselves by their own particular "take" on Charlie Parker (just as dozens of Woody Herman "Four Brothers" tenor stars defined themselves by their angles in relation to Lester Young); the killer drummers, who responded to the accusations of over-intellectualism by pounding with enough primitive force to knead all the pizza dough in Brooklyn - and parts of Staten Island.”

- Will Friedwald, Jazz author and critic

“Kenton recalled that : "Bill Mathieu was a young guy when I first met him. When he was only 16 years old he had written a first arrangement that he showed me. I was very impressed with his talents, and later on we brought him into the band as a writer. He was also in the trumpet section for a little while, but he didn't really play well enough, and it didn't work out. Bill had a very difficult time writing rhythm music ; he wrote a few swing things to pace STANDARDS IN SILHOUETTE, but they weren't very good, so I finally said : 'Bill, let's not worry about that, let's make it entirely a mood album.'"

- Michael Sparke, Peter Venudor, Stan Kenton: The Studio Sessions

Returning to the episodic favorite recordings theme, there are many albums by the Stan Kenton Orchestra that fit into this category especially those like Contemporary Concepts and Back to Balboa with Mel Lewis on drums.

But other favorites by the band such as Cuban Fire, New Concepts, and Innovations feature the band’s orchestral prowess rather than its swinging pulse and along these lines,  Standards in Silhouette sort of fits into this category but with a heavy element of “mood music” underscoring the texture of the arrangements by Bill Mathieu.

Stan’s was always an arranger’s band and writers like Rugolo, Russo, Holman, Mulligan, Graettinger, Roland, Paich, Niehaus, Barton, Levy, Hanna and many others walked in and out of the orchestra each contributing to the Kenton oeuvre along the way.

Bill Mathieu’s short time with the band produced primarily nine tracks that have been combined to make up one album and which have been variously described as “scholarly orchestrations” and “elegant structures” in the reviews that greeted  Standards in Silhouette which was recorded on September 21 and 22, 1959 in the ballroom of Riverside Plaza Hotel in New York City.

By way of background, here is how this landmark LP came about as described in the following excerpts from Stan Kenton - This Is An Orchestra! By Michael Sparke, [pp. 156-159].

“Also taped by the Stan Kenton Orchestra at the Tropicana/Las Vegas in 1959 was the first-recorded arrangement by newcomer Bill Mathieu of "This Is Always." Mathieu differed in many ways from your average jazzman: a well-educated, highly literate, intellectually minded philosopher, he would soon produce one of the most enduringly efficacious albums in the Kenton oeuvre. …

Stan was paying Bill Mathieu $60 plus bed and board, but Bill was finding it hard to meet his own aspirations. He longed to write rhythmic music and join the arranging elite of Mulligan and Holman, but nothing seemed to come out quite right, and rather than try to fix the faults, Stan preferred to simply junk the charts altogether. An exception was the Latin "What Is This Thing Called Love," heard on Tantara's Revelations, a good arrangement, but a genre already well exploited by Johnny Richards and others.

Jim Amlotte explained why Bill's early pieces didn't make it: "Stan made up his mind about a piece of music very fast. One take, one play-through, and that was it." Bill's breakthrough came when Mathieu found his own voice in San Francisco, though not in the swing style he had been aiming for. Recomposition [disguising standard melodies with an arranger’s own additional themes] was certainly not new to the Kenton band.

Graettinger had practiced the art in 1948, Russo (Mathieu's friend and mentor) in 1953, and Holman in 1955. But Bill discovered an entirely new approach to recomposing standard ballads at the same time as he discovered San Francisco: "Separated from the band and on my own in an enchanted city, an innate joy broke the surface like a gulping fish. Music poured through. I wrote an arrangement of 'The Thrill Is Gone' that I knew was good." Kenton too knew a good score when he heard one. "That's a beautiful thing, Bill," he said. "What's next?"

Mathieu remained behind in Chicago after an engagement at the Blue Note to continue his writing. "Willow Weep for Me" and "Lazy Afternoon" joined the growing number of arrangements, and one afternoon in the well of the band bus Stan casually remarked, "Bill, why don't you start thinking in terms of a record of your music?" At just 22 years old, Mathieu would be Kenton's youngest arranger to have an album of his own charts.

With such an incentive, Bill's inspiration took wings. During a two-week stay at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, the band rehearsed "I Get Along without You Very Well," "Django," "Lonely Woman," and "Ill Wind": "Stan is genuinely pleased. Everyone has a seaside glow. The band is swinging. Charged layers of cymbals and brass sift through the ocean air. Success is easy!" These were the halcyon days, before realization set in. By August the material was complete. ...

Standards in Silhouette was a triumph, different from anything else the band had ever played, yet uniquely Kenton in sound and style. The album rates alongside Cuban Fire, New Concepts, and Innovations as one of Stan's indispensable, all-time, great orchestral achievements. Mathieu has reconstructed these popular melodies with intricate care and detail. He extracts fragments from the songs and weaves these themes with his own motifs, using both sections and soloists, often in counterpoint. Short fill-ins by individual instruments (as well as featured soloists) are used as an integral part of the structural jigsaw. Especially exciting is the way the brass crescendos arise unpredictably, and often end unexpectedly, allowing a more peaceful but always appropriate statement to emerge from the melee. And the momentum is sustained without a lull over nine songs of concert duration, affording a consistency, a unity of style, that gives the music its own identity, so that it resembles a Suite.

Many elements fitted together to make Silhouette so perfect. Mathieu's charts are of course the foundation, but the music could not have come together the way it did without Stan's experience and expertise, and the orchestra's understanding of Bill's intentions. Every credit is due the principal soloists, who loved this music to a man. "Absolutely gorgeous," said Bill Trujillo. And Archie LeCoque (outstanding on my own favorite: "I Get Along without You Very Well") confirms: "I think my solos on Standards in Silhouette were the best work I did with Kenton. Bill Mathieu wrote such beautiful charts you didn't really have to stretch out too much, you just stuck close to the melody and the arrangements took care of everything else." And Bill himself adds: "I was very happy with all the soloists, but particularly Charlie [Mariano]. His playing, especially on 'Django,' provided the spark and the jazz authenticity that the album needed."

The above excerpts are a re-working in book form of the following insert notes that Michael wrote for Standards in Silhouettes - Stan Kenton: The Kenton Touch in A Warm Blue Mood Capitol Jazz CD CDP 7243 4 94503 2 5], and while some of the language may be the same as that used in the book, these notes also contain additional information.

“From the time he was 14 years old, Bill Mathieu knew he was going to write for Stan Kenton, a leader whose music he idolized with a fervor few ordinary fans could envisage. It wasn't an easy path to Kenton's door, and there were many setbacks along the way, but Bill Russo proved an effective teacher, with invaluable advice based on his own experiences of the Kenton psyche. It says much of Math ie us persistence that in January 1959, at 21 years of age and still something of an idealist, Bill Mathieu entered the real world as staff arranger for the Kenton band.

None of his first arrangements caught the Kenton imagination, until the time Bill discovered San Francisco. "Separated from the band and on my own in an enchanted city, an innate joy broke the surface like a gulping fish. Music poured through. J wrote an arrangement of "The Thrill Is Gone" that I knew was good. We rehearsed it one afternoon in Chicago, and Stan's ears perked up. "That's a beautiful thing, Bill," he said. "What's next?"

Mathleu's talent had enabled him to come up with the near-impossible, an original and especially beautiful slant on writing concert arrangements of popular ballads, that made them sound fresh and different. Kenton was genuinely impressed and eager for more, and as "Willow Weep For Me," "Lazy Afternoon" and others entered the book, suggested to Bill he should start thinking in terms of his own album—at just 22, the youngest Kenton arranger ever to be so honored.

Mathieu's special skill lay in almost recomposing standard melodies with his own additional themes, an art aspired to by many writers, but rarely accomplished with the flair and ingenuity that Mathieu achieves. Bill explained to me how he approached the task: "The trick is to locate the aspects of the original song that give you special pleasure, or that seem especially rewarding, and keep reworking them until a hybrid appears that is your own concept, but nevertheless allows your car to keep track of the source material. The 'aspects' might be a melodic phrase, a couple of chords, a characteristic rhythm, or even something in the lyrics, like the suppressed bitterness in "The Thrill Is Gone," the loss in "Willow Weep For Me," or the lethargy in "Lazy Afternoon." These are clues, and you run and spiral with them until your own ideas are braided with those of the composer and lyricist. Then you begin!"

There is a consistency, a unity of style about the orchestrations that give the music its own identity, so that it almost resembles a suite. Stan allowed Mathieu almost unfettered creative freedom, and together they decided the proper tempo for each piece, the appropriate soloists, and useful cuts and additions, right down to which titles actually belonged on the record and which should be omitted. At first Bill was doubtful about recording in a cavernous ballroom, as opposed to the intimacy and control of a studio, but he concluded: "Stan and producer Lee Gillette were absolutely right: the band sounds alive and awake {not always easy when recording many hours of slow-tempo music in a studio), and most importantly, the players could hear themselves well in the live room. The end result is that the band sounds strong and cohesive, and the album is well recorded."

Mathieu is well-served by his soloists, as he is quick to acknowledge: "To observe the guys endure the stress of recording with such a high degree of skill and accuracy made me feel very lucky. Their attitude to the music was quite positive as far as I could tell, and I was especially happy with the soloists, Roger, Rolf and most especially Archie. As for Charlie (Mariano), his playing, especially on "Django," provided the spark and authenticity the album needed." According to LeCoque (at his finest on "I Get Along Without You Very Well): "I think my solos on the Silhouette album were the best work I did with Kenton. Bill wrote such beautiful charts that you didn't really have to stretch out too much, you just stuck close to the melody, and the arrangements took care of everything else." There isn't a weak solo throughout, but note especially the trumpet cameo on "The Thrill Is Gone" by Roger Middleton, described by lead trumpet Bud Brisbois as: "The only solo Roger ever recorded with Stan. Roger was a very good jazz player, but he never got much of a chance with Rolf Ericson in the band."

In later years, Stan believed he had come up with the album title, but Bill remembers exactly how the name arose: "I had been walking the boardwalk in Atlantic City, trying to think of a title for the new album, something that carried forward the visual metaphor of Sketches on Standards and Portraits on Standards, when I paused to watch an attractive girl having her profile magically cut out of black paper by a silhouette artist. The title Standards in Silhouette occurred to me at that moment, and I suggested it to Stan in the well of the bus, 'That's a great title, Bill,' he said, genuinely pleased. 'Did you think of it yourself?' But it's OK with me that Stan recollects it as his own - that's an easy thing to do after many decades and uncountable miles."

Some hear a hint of Gil Evans in Mathieu's work, and Bill admits to an admiration for Gil's writing, among other composers who were striving to enrich the intellectual content of jazz without thinning its blood. Any Evans influence is tempered by Mathieu's highly inventive and scholarly orchestrations, and Bill has learned his Kenton lessons well; there is a wonderful contrast between the darkly brooding, low-keyed passages, and the high-powered trumpet climaxes. I certainly wish Mathieu had remained longer in the Kenton orbit, but instead he moved on to write for Duke Ellington, and then, such were Bill's intellectual abilities and interests, away from the jazz idiom into classical and other styles of music.

But it was Kenton's judgement that gave Mathieu his first chance, the legacy of this recording, as Bill recalls with gratitude: "I was a young, unknown and untested writer, and with Standards in Silhouette, Stan granted my truest wish: to bring my best work of 'concert' ballad arrangements into the public eye."

—MICHAEL SPARKE March 1998

Vinyl rip of Stan Kenton's 1959 record "Standards in Silhouette." Ripped with Audio Technica AT-LP60 USB turntable on Audacity.

The Blue Note Years of Dizzy Reece by Tony Hall, Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler and Michael Cuscuna

© -Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Reece is the opposite of the performer who aims only for effects he is certain of attaining…his fondness for wide intervals and the grasp of dynamics gives his lines true dramatic strength.”

- British critic Michael James, in reviewing Dizzy’s Blues In Trinity LP (Blue Note 4006),

In case you haven’t looked at it in a while, the subheading for the JazzProfiles blog reads - “Focused Profiles on Jazz and its Creators while also Featuring the Work of Guest Writers and Critics on the Subject of Jazz.  [Emphasis mine].

I’ve been learning about Jazz from a wide variety of Jazz musicians, authors and critics for over 60 years, so why stop now - right?

As is our wont, when the editorial staff at JazzProfiles decides on a feature, it generally makes a search of the Jazz literature in an attempt to offer you a number of different opinions and perspectives on the subject at hand.

Such is the case with this profile of trumpeter, composer and bandleader Dizzy Reece for which we’ve enlisted the aid of Tony Hall, Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler and Michael Cuscuna. Not coincidentally, they are also the composers of the liner/insert notes for the four recordings that Dizzy made for Blue Note from 1958 - 1960.

I first heard Dizzy on Suite Sixteen: The Music of Victor Feldman - Big Band/Quartet/Septet [Contemporary C3541/OJCCD 1728-2] which was a 1958 LP that Lester Koenig, always a big fan of Victor’s, released in 1958 made up of recordings by Feldman’s various groups that Mike Butcher and Tony Hall had produced in London in 1955.

Through a longstanding association with Victor, beginning in the years when he was the resident pianist and vibraphonist at the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach, CA he made me aware of other recordings that he made with Dizzy in London some of which have been released on Jasmine CD reissue of Tempo LPs including Victor Feldman Departure Dates [Jasmine JASCD 609], Victor Feldman in London Volume I [Jasmine JASCD 622] and Victor Feldman in London Volume II [Jasmine JASCD 625].

The first thing that struck me about Dizzy Reece’s playing - notwithstanding his nickname [his given first name is Alphonso] - is that he doesn’t sound like anyone else.

Or as Richard Cook and Brian Morton state in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.: “Reece wasn’t a bruising player, he kept the fireworks under restraint, even as snapping little phrases suddenly broke out of his line of thought. … [His playing] has lots of rough edges …. Reece is difficult to pin down stylistically. Thought he can play skyrocketing top-note lines, there’s something curiously melancholy about his work. … [He is] a dedicated practitioner whose work has been unjustly neglected in recent years.”

Tony Hall, the producer who more than anyone was responsible for bringing Dizzy to the attention of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff and the resulting four LPs that Dizzy would make for the label between 1958-1960 as leader said of Dizzy’s approach:

“When discussing a musician new to the American record-buying public, it’s customary for the annotator to write at length about his various influences.  I find this very difficult with Diz. I’ve been listening to him for five years now. I’ve watched his technique improve. At one time, it was a question of digging what he was thinking more than what he played.  But now his thoughts are coming out of the bell of his horn with clarity. To me, he has always sounded like just himself. “Sure I’ve listened to lots of trumpet players” he says. “But I just feel my music this way.  My playing is like my way of life. It’s a religion”.

He’s basically a “hot” player.  Sometimes his lines are simple: at others, naggingly multi-notedly complex.  “But if people are looking for something mysterious or sensational in my playing they won’t find it.  I just like to play”. He has a tremendous – often starkly dramatic – feeling for dynamics. This sense of drama in his playing is accentuated by his use of unusual intervals and accenting of notes. “- Blues in Trinity [Blue Note BST 84006 - B2 32093]

Writing in Dizzy’s second Blue Note recording - Star Bright [BST 84023 TOCJ-4023] - Leonard Feather offered these quotations from Dizzy about the source of his original approach to trumpet:

"My father was a pianist; he played in silent movie theatres, but I hardly ever got to hear him play.  My inspiration came from the street parade bands in Kingston.  I was only three years old when I started running out trying to follow them - I would disappear for hours until they had to send the police for me.  Then when I was about seven I would stay out late at night just to listen to a trumpet player called Gabriel, who was working in a club.  I would wait around just to be able to pack up his instrument for him. Just to get hold of the trumpet.

"I wished I could explain how I felt the first time I heard the sound of the trumpet.  The uncanny part about it is hearing the trumpet in a brass band.  Coming from a brass band it is usually loud and brassy, but I didn't hear it like that at all.  I have been trying ever since to play it the exact way.  I hear it, but it's still a long way from perfection.  The first stylist I really listened to was Buck Clayton on the old Basie records, but I always tried to get my own sound; you have to be your own man."

Leonard went on to proffer:

“The emergence of Dizzy Reece as an important new name in jazz should help to draw further attention to the fact that good jazz music and be produced by a person born to do so, regardless of latitude or longitude. 

Subjected to the environment he could find during the past few years in London or Paris, there was no obstacle to the development of a completely mature jazz style on the part of any musician with the soul, the technique and the desire for self-expression.  Dizzy Reece has these qualities in abundance, and even in the rat race of the New York jazz world he now faces, there isn't a chance in the world that they will be neglected or lost.”

Ira Gitler stepped up for the notes to Soundin’ Off [BST 84033, TOCJ-9513] and offered these comments about Dizzy’s style:

“Although his direct musical lineage comes down from Gillespie, Navarro and Clifford Brown, Dizzy Reece is an individual.  “I can only say the things I live”, is his credo. When Dizzy uses the word “say” in regard to his trumpet playing, it is extremely appropriate because he does talk through his horn.  He is further proof that certain instruments are a continuation of the human voice. “The saxophone gets the fluidity. It’s harder to do on the trumpet – the circle…”, he says, referring to a continuous flow of sound, running back into itself, that saxophonists can achieve.

“The only thing that is bugging me is the mastery of the horn and you never really get that up to the grave.”  I might add that this is a relative mastery because Reece is so conversant with his trumpet that he is able to evoke sounds which are not found in any exercise book.  Sometimes he gets a bubbling, gargling sound that seems to emanate from underwater. It bears no relation to Shep Fields. This and other “vocal” effects make Dizzy’s style very personal.

Dizzy states, philosophically, “Sometimes you speak fluently, sometimes you don’t.  But every effort must be conscious. I can sit back and play the same things I played before and be asleep.  But I don’t think that way.” …

There are places where Reece appears to be hitting wrong notes.  This was my reaction when I first listened to the album. Then I thought, “An intelligent, conscientious musician wouldn’t let mistakes like these pass.  Could he be playing these notes on purpose?” When I asked him, he bore out my second contention.

“I’m working on quarter tones and eighth tones between the notes.  I can see the relativity between Eastern music and jazz”, was Dizzy’s comment.”

Which brings us to Comin’ On, Dizzy’s fourth Blue Note recording which is made up of sessions recorded in April and July of 1960, but not released until October 7, 1999 as BN B2-22019, CD 526721.

In the following insert notes which he prepared for the Mosaic Select Dizzy Reece boxed set, Michael explains how Comin’ On came about and also provides a succinct recapitulation of the highlights of Dizzy’s recording career.

© -Michael Cuscuna/Mosaic Records; copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with permission.

COMIN’ ON

“Dizzy Reece came to jazz the long way around. Born in Kingston, Jamaica on January 5, 1931, Dizzy was exposed to music early on. His father was a pianist for a movie theatre that showed silent films. Hearing parade brass bands at an early age, the sound of the trumpet captured his soul. Eventually records by Basie with Buck Clayton and Don Byas drew him to jazz. He took up the baritone horn at 11, switching to trumpet three years later. In 1948, the desire to play jazz and the growth of the new music known as be-bop drew him to a larger playing field, Europe.  By 1954, with a well-developed style of his own very much and a big, brilliant tone, he settled in London.

Jazz dj, journalist and producer Tony Hall, a man who still has incredibly open and interested ears, began producing an excellent series of albums by Reece (as well as Victor Feldman, Tubby Hayes and others) for the Tempo label in 1955. Some of Reece's Tempo masters were issued in U.S. on Imperial and Savoy and an album of Feldman’s sessions with Reece came out on Contemporary, but with little impact. Tony sent records to friends in America. At least two, Miles Davis and Alfred Lion, were impressed. Lion arranged for Hall to produce a Reece session for Blue Note with label regulars Donald Byrd and Art Taylor in the line-up. Because of inflexible, protectionist laws enacted by the British musicians' union, the August 24, 1958 session held at Decca Studios in London had to be portrayed as being done in Paris.  The great reception that the album Blues In Trinity received gave Reece the courage to move to New York, a place where he'd been yearning to make music, where he'd find rhythm sections that could not only keep up, but also challenge him.

He arrived on October 21, 1959 and was at Rudy Van Gelder's studio, making his second Blue Note album, Star Bright on November 19. Taylor was again on drums and the group was completed by Hank Mobley, Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers. A few days prior, Reece recorded with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, playing congas on two tunes for a date that was ultimately released in 1980 as Africaine; it was Wayne Shorter's first session. Blue Note even staged a welcoming party at Well's in Harlem for the new arrival to these shores, a rather extravagant gesture for a struggling, independent label.

Dizzy's next session on April 3, 1960 produced the first 5 tracks on this CD, issued here for the first time. It was also the first Blue Note appearance by Stanley Turrentine, then with Max Roach and soon to become a Blue Note artist. The rhythm section belonged to the Jazz Messengers of that time: Bobby Timmons, Jymie Merritt and Art Blakey.  Reece's originals show a jazz composer with an unusual gift for melody. The Case Of The Frightened Lover is particularly memorable. Achmet, which opens with Reece on congas and Blakey trading solos and engaging in dialogues, is a minor tune that's derived from an Algerian melody. Ye Olde Blues is just that. Reece has a marvelous sense of construction, letting Turrentine's tenor solo lead things off before the theme is played. It might have been this tenor solo that inspired Lion to use Turrentine on Jimmy Smith's Back At The Chicken Shack/Midnight Special session three weeks later. The non-originals are a bright treatment of Tenderly and the Spanish song The Story Of Love.

A month later, Dizzy did a quartet date with Walter Bishop, Doug Watkins and Art Taylor, which was promptly issued as Soundin' Off.

Then on July 17 came the session that closes this CD. Stanley Turrentine returns, but tenor saxophonist Musa Kaleem is added to the front line. The rhythm section is Duke Jordan, Sam Jones and Al Harewood. While these proceedings probably led to Reece and Turrentine as the front line for Duke Jordan's Flight To Jordan the following month, nothing from this date was issued until now.

Musa Kaleem, who'd played with Mary Lou Williams and Fletcher Henderson as Orlando Wright in the early '40s, was on the original Art Blakey's Messengers date for Blue Note in 1947. After years away from music, he played flute on a Tiny Grimes-Coleman Hawkins album for Prestige in 1958 and then toured and recorded with James Moody. After this Reece session, little is known of his professional activities except that Horace Silver recorded his Sanctimonious Sam in 1963 (the track remained unissued until 1978).

Kaleem plays flute on the melody of Goose Dance and is the first tenor soloist on that tune and Comin' On. He has a bigger, more hollow sound than Turrentine, who solos first on Reece's sensational  Sands. Both lay out for the quartet reading of The Things We Did Last Summer.

Clearly, the April 3 session had come into doubt as worthy of release by this time. Reece tried Achmet and The Case Of The Frightened Lover with this sextet, but the results were frayed, truly rejected performances.  The first attempts proved far more successful.

Dizzy's association with Blue Note faded after 1960. In 1962, he made Asia Minor for Prestige, re-recording Achmet and The Story Of Love. Lack of steady work in New York made him a transoceanic commuter by necessity. In 1968, Reece was a member of Dizzy Gillespie’s Reunion Big Band, which toured Europe and made an album for MPS. 1969 was a particularly active year for recording, he was on Dexter Gordon's A Day In Copenhagen, also for MPS, in March, Hank Mobley's The Flip, done in Paris, in July and on the recently-released Andrew Hill nonet date Passing Ships at Van Gelder's studio in November. The Mobley and Hill dates were his last appearances on Blue Note.

Despite his considerable talents as a player and composer, Reece has only made four albums as a leader since the sixties: From In To Out with John Gilmore for Futura in Paris in 1970, Possession, Exorcism, Peace for Honey Dew in the early '70s, Manhattan Project for Bee Hive in 1978 and Blowin' Away with Ted Curson for Interplay in the same year. He was also featured on Clifford Jordan’s Inward Fire on Muse in 1978. In 1991, he toured and recorded with Jordan’s big band.

The paucity of recorded music by this unique trumpeter makes these unissued Blue Note sessions all the more valuable. And tunes like The Case Of The Frightened Lover and Sands remind us what a talented composer he is as well.”

• Michael Cuscuna, 1999 & 2003

Michel Petrucciani - One Night in Karlsruhe

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.  

“Over the course of this year [2009] , Dreyfus Jazz, the French-American label, will issue remastered, repackaged, and in most cases expanded versions of the ten albums that Petrucciani recorded for the label in his last years [he died on January 5, 1999 at the age of 36], as well as a two-DVD set of documentary and concert footage not previously released in this country.

The series is an overdue reminder of the ecstatic power of Petrucciani's music. I cannot think of a jazz pianist since Petrucciani who plays with such exuberance and unashamed joy. Marcus Roberts and Michel Camilo have greater technique; Bill Charlap and Eric Reed, better control; Fred Hersch has broader emotional range; Uri Caine is more adventurous. Their music provides a wealth of rewards - but not the simple pleasure of Michel Petrucciani's. With the whole business of jazz so tentative today, you would think more musicians would express some of Petrucciani's happiness to be alive.

The power Petrucciani communicated, as a pianist, was the force of a will, a muscularity of the mind. He admired and emulated Duke Ellington, but had to simulate the effect Ellington and some other strong pianists have achieved by using more of their bodies than their hands. (Ellington, like Randy Weston today, put his lower arm weight into his playing to give it extra heft.) Petrucciani generated power through the speed of his attack. His force was willed; but, in the determined gleefulness of his playing, it never sounded forced.

Giddily free as an improviser, Petrucciani trusted his impulses. If he liked the sound of a note, he would drop a melody suddenly and just repeat that one note dozens of times. His music is enveloping: he lost himself in it, and it feels like a private place where strange things can safely ensue.

Today, when so much jazz can sound cold and schematic, Petrucciani's music reminds us of the eloquence of unchecked emotion. "When I play, I play with my heart and my head and my spirit," Petrucciani once explained to an interviewer. "This doesn't have anything to do with how I look. That's how I am. I don't play to people's heads, but to their hearts. I like to create laughter and emotion from people - that's my way of working."

- David Hajdu The New Republic, March 18, 2009

“One midsummer evening in 1978, pedestrians on the narrow unpaved main street of the village of Cliousclat in the Drome region [of France] were startled when what looked like a puppet wearing Count Basie’s yachting cap leaned out of an old tinny Citroen 2 CV and exclaimed: ‘Hey, Baby!’

It was Michel Petrucciani.  At the time, they were the only words of English he knew.  But the Provencal musicians who lived in the area had spread the word about the 15-year old piano player who lived in the city of Montelimar [near Avignon] and who played Jazz like a veteran.

It’s a good thing he started early because he was not going to last all that long.” [Sadly, it was to last only twenty 20 years, but what a 20 years!]

-

- Mike Zwerin, writing in The International Herald Tribune, January 1999, a week after the death of Michel Petrucciani from a pulmonary infection at the age of thirty-six [36],  

“If the death of a musician touches us in a special way, it is because they take their secrets with them — the secret of their unique musical sound, the secret of their precise relation to space, air and the movement of their bodies that they alone knew how to produce.”

- Francis Marmande writing in La Chambre d'Amour

A number of years ago, a friend who lives in Holland, sent me a radio broadcast from a concert that took place on July 10, 1988 at Van Goghzaal at the Congress Center, The Hague, The Netherlands.

The performance was by pianist Michel Petrucciani’s trio and it was part of the 1988 North Sea Jazz Festival [NSJF]. At the time, Michel was touring with Gary Peacock on bass and Roy Haynes on drums. Some group, right?

Michel had left Paris-based Owl Records and was under contract to Blue Note and he had released five tracks with Gary and Roy as part of Michel Plays Petrucciani [Blue Note CDP 7 48679 2] which were recorded at Clinton recording Studio in NYC on September 24, 1987. Given the makeup of this version of Michel’s trio, I was very disappointed not to find more of it available on other Blue Note recordings.

Needless to say, then, I was thrilled when the 8 tracks from the radio broadcast featuring Michel, Gary and Roy at the 1988 NSJF arrived “at the editorial offices of JazzProfiles” some years ago.

And there the matter lay until Michael Bloom, who heads up his own firm which offers Jazz promotional materials to the media, contacted me and asked me if I had any interest in - wait for it - One Night in Karlsruhe - Michel Petrucciani, Gary Peacock and Roy Haynes [SWR Jazzhaus JAH-476].

Recorded on July 7th, 1988 at the jubez karlsruhe öffnungszeiten and comprised of 10 tracks totaling 77’34” of music, the album is a sheer delight from beginning to end, a veritable feast for all the senses offered up by three musicians who have achieved the highest form of Jazz expression and interpretation.

It was around this time in his career that Michel began to write original compositions to serve as the basis for his improvisations and five of these are represented on the Karlsruhe recording: 13th, One for Us, Mr. K. J., She Did It Again and La Champagne. Petrucciani helps us “set ours ears” by blending in four interpretations from the Great American Songbook - My Funny Valentine, There Will Never Be Another You, Embraceable You and In A Sentimental Mood along with one Jazz standard, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps.

If you reflect on the characteristics of Michel’s playing that are detailed by David Hajdu in the opening quotations to this posting from his piece in The New Republic, they will provide you with a number of keys to unlock, what Marmande refers to as Michel’s “secrets” as an improviser.

When Michel digs into a solo, its full speed ahead: he never repeats himself; there are no resting places; he just inventively surges ahead in an effort to seize the moment -  occupandi temporis His entire career was like that: a career of urgency.

In the following notes to One Night in Karlsruhe - Michel Petrucciani, Gary Peacock and Roy Haynes, Ralf Dombrowski expands on this later theme by labeling it -

CARPE DIEM [“Seize the day”]

“Michel Petrucciani's career had picked up speed. Some wild years were already behind him. In Paris, he not only played as a teenager with Kenny Clarke and Clark Terry, but, in addition to performing music, tried to take in as much life as possible. Some recognized his extraordinary talent: the drummer Aldo Romano and the owner of Owl Records, Jean-Jacques Pussiau, who promoted the boy with brittle-bone disease to the utmost of his abilities. But it was America that first put him on track, especially Charles Lloyd, whom he visited in California in 1982 and so impressed him that the saxophonist ended his hitherto cultivated retreat from the music business and went on tour with Petrucciani.

This band was the door opener to an international reputation. Press and colleagues became aware of him; in 1984 he settled in New York and established new social networks. Two years later, his first album for Blue Note was released: "Pianism", a recording with Palle Danielsson and Eliot Zigmund which was linked to several earlier projects with comparable ensembles. With his predilection for the piano trio as a central form of expression, Petrucciani was out of step with the mid-eighties. Although Keith Jarrett chose this option with some success, on the whole the piano tho had been considered exhausted since the death of Bill Evans.

Petrucciani was not impressed by this view and steadily engaged new partners to join him. For example, in December 1987 he entered a sound studio with Eddie Gomez and Al Foster to record some of his own compositions. A few months earlier, he had realized the same plan with Gary Peacock and Roy Haynes. The recordings were released the following year under the title "Michel Plays Petrucciani", and the pianist took some of them with him on tour. When he stopped off in Karlsruhe on 7 July 1988, he had "13th", "Mr. K.J.", "La Champagne", "One of Us" and "She Did It Again" in his musical baggage. The remainder of the program consisted of evergreens from the Great American Songbook and freestyle pieces of modem jazz such as John Coltrane's "Giant Steps".

Michel Petrucciani was a driven man, playing in his most active period more than one hundred concerts a year, with the feeling deep inside him that, given his illness [osteogenesis imperfecta, brittle bones disease] he had less time available than other people, a feeling which he repeatedly mentioned in talks with friends and journalists. He wanted to condense his music, releasing energy under tension in an awaited discharge.

The bassist Gary Peacock and the drummer Roy Haynes were the perfect partners. One had been socialized in post bop, sowed his wild oats in Free-Time and later, as a partner of Bill Evans, Paul Bley and Keith Jarrett among others, perfected his trio playing. Roy Haynes had personally experienced the birth of bebop and was one of the busiest jazz luminaries in his field.

This concentrated experience and musicality combined with Petrucciani's need for communication to form a tonal language that was extremely compact even in its redundancies and constantly conveyed immediacy.

The audience in Karlsruhe therefore experienced a jazz evening that had everything: intimacy and exaltation, subtleties and fireworks, modernism and Old School, For it was listening to a trio that played as if it were a matter of life and death - according to Petrucciani's motto: ‘to see the big picture in each moment.’”

- Ralf Dombrowski. Translated by Jonathan Uhlaner

In full flight, Michel is mesmerizing; an artist possessed. He’s one of those exceptional, electrifying musicians who comes along once in a lifetime, albeit, in his case, a very short one.

Given these circumstances, you won’t want to miss adding this recording to your collection.

In A Sentimental Mood

Giant Steps