Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
2011 Monterey Jazz Festival
Click here to be directed to the MJF website for information about the festival's 2011 featured performers, pricing, seating, et al.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Eric Ineke’s “Blues, Ballads and Other Bright Moments”
© -Steven Cerra , copyright protected; all rights
Much of the time, the elements that make up a successful Jazz recording largely go unnoticed.
“Successful” in the sense of satisfying and “unnoticed” in that they are taken for granted, assumed or accepted. The music on a particular album is so good that the reasons why this is the case are barely given a thought.
All of us know when we’ve encountered such a recording because we find ourselves playing it over and over again.
Such has been the case for me recently with drummer Eric Ineke’s new CD on Daybreak: Blues, Ballads and Other Bright Moments [DBCHR 74064] which is due for general release on June 3, 2011 .
I’ve been enjoying the new CD by Eric’s quintet so much that the only time I have had it out of my home CD player is when I take it with me to listen to while driving my car.
Why?
Why is this a recording that merits such attention?
The answers to this question begin with the musicians themselves. Eric has assembled a group of talented, Dutch Jazz musicians who with Blues, Ballads and Other Bright Moments are making their third album together.
This long association between the players lends itself to a cohesiveness which results in the music evenly unfolding. Despite changes in tempo, rhythmic styles or whether the tune is a blues, a ballad or a “bright moment” [i.e.: a “burner"], the pace of the album constantly engages the listener as it moves from track-to-track.
The interconnected flow of the recording is even more amazing when one considers that all of the tracks where recorded in-performance on three separate occasions, November 29, 2008, May 10, 2009, and May 14, 2009, and in three different locations in Holland.
In addition to Eric on drums, the musicians in his JazzXpress are Rik Mol on trumpet and flugelhorn, Sjoerd Dijkhuizen on tenor sax, Rob van Bavel on piano, and Marius Beets on bass. Ruud Breuls substitutes for Rik on three tracks and Rob van Kreeveld steps in for Rob van Bavel on A Portrait of Jenny.
Eric is a “stay-at-home” drummer and with him in command in the background, the horn players are able to calmly execute their solos – whatever the tempo – and create their improvisations in such a way that they “speak” to the listener.
Put another way, all of the quintet’s member have good technical control over their instruments and this along with Eric’s steady time-keeping allows them to “slow things down” [visualize] and really think and feel what they want to “say” in their improvised solos.
Of course, such improvised solos are really substituted melodies and when they are done in an interesting way, these continue to engage the listener’s attention because of the surprise of what’s coming next.
A drummer can just take keeping time so far without the benefit of the insistent “heart beat” or pulse that an excellent bassist gives to the music.
In this regard, Eric is ably assisted by bassist Marius Betts who “locks in” beautifully with Eric to keep the time rich and full sounding while also framing the chords for the improvisers.
Marius’ bass lines are so compelling and rewarding that the listener could go through the entire album just focusing on them.
Although arranging credits are not listed on the disc, judging from what I have learned about Marius from previous albums, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a hand in all of the arrangements.
Trumpeters Rik Mol and Ruud Breuls play the horn in a mellifluous manner with a heavy emphasis on the instrument’s middle register. Chet Baker and Kenny Dorham come to mind as compared to some of the more brassier and attacking styles of playing the instrument.
And yet, in both cases, it would be a mistake to think of either Rik or Ruud as merely clones of iconic Jazz trumpeters because each is very much his own man and offer signature elements in their solos that give them a unique quality.
There is a calmness to their approach that allows their improvisation to unfold and to create an impact on the listener. You can hum or sing what they play; they are always so musical and so swinging.
And when it comes to swinging, no one takes a back-seat to tenor saxophonist Sjoerd Dijkhuizen who “plants his feet” and really “brings it” solo after solo. Take your pick - Hank Mobely and Tina Brooks or Zoot Sims and Al Cohn – Sjoerd is in the tradition of all of these tenor saxophonists, but his sound is characteristically his own. His big, beautifully rounded tone on tenor is never grating or shrill and his improvised ideas flow effortlessly and endlessly.
Like Zoot, you get the feeling that Sjoerd came to play and could play all night – even after they close all the lights in the club!
Given the fact that Rik, Ruud, Sjoerd, and Marius are all still relatively young men, another quality that impresses the listener is their maturity, and no one more so than another relative youngster - pianist Rob van Bavel.
It’s difficult to play Jazz consistently well, especially in the role of an accompanist who is also expected to become a soloist. There is a lot of responsibility in feeding the horn soloists chords, or “comping” in musician-speak, and doing it in such a way so as to aid and assist with the propulsive force being created by the bassist and the drummer.
Unless he is very disciplined and always aware of what’s going on in the music, a pianist can impede the soloist by overplaying as an accompanist and override the rhythm section through the use of phrases that conflict with the easy flow of the time.
Pianist Rob van Bavel walks this fine line with ease and centers the group’s music while also contributing solos that are exciting and engaging.
Someone once said that with the piano, the whole theory of music in right in front of you in black and white.
Van Bavel doesn’t abuse the privilege of having this arsenal of 88 keys at his command and always seems to chose well whether his role is to support or as a solo voice.
Among the seven tunes on the album are A Monk’s Dream and The JAMF’s Are Coming, both of which were written by Johnny Griffin the late, legendary tenor saxophonist who lived in Europe for a number of years and with whom Eric performed on many occasions.
[“JAMF” was in vogue as hip language for a short while and never quite caught on as phrase for wider public usage. It is an abbreviation for “Jive A** Mother F” …. use your imagination].
Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight, Gene DePaul's and Don Raye's You Don't Know What Love Is, and the Dimitri Tiomkin- Nat King Cole collaboration, A Portrait of Jenny, make up the “ballads” portion of the program with Marius Beets’ up-tempo Jotosco being one of the album’s “blues” and “bright moments.”
For me, the disc's brightest moment is the JazzXpress interpretation of Nightingale, a tune composed in 1942 by orchestra leader Xavier Cugart and George Rosner with lyrics by Fred Wise. It was recorded by Russ Morgan who led what was then termed a "sweet band" [think Guy Lombardo, Sammy Kaye and Lester Lanin] during The Swing Era.
The tune resurfaced again as the theme song for the 1955 RKO/Warner Bros. movie El Americano that starred Glenn Ford, Cesar Romero, Abbe Lane and Frank Lovejoy.
The soundtrack was written by the very same Xavier Cugart, the Latin bandleader who was better known to some by this time as “Abbe Lane
Played with a lugubrious rumba beat [which, by the mid-1950s, was being replaced in popularity by the mambo], the melody for The Theme from El Americano [as Nightingale was then renamed] is carried by the flute in the lower register in unison with a bassoon so as to create a sinister and mysterious tropical music sound [the film takes place in Brazil near the plains south of the Amazon River Basin].
In either of its earlier manifestations, Nightingale was a singularly uninteresting piece of music.
Enter the Jazz musician.
Jazz musicians are always making things out of air. Someone gets an idea and the next thing you know a non-descript tune like Nightingale becomes a hip tune to play on.
I remember hearing tenor saxophonist Richie Kamuca play Nightingale with a quartet that he put together in 1958 with Victor Feldman on piano, Scott LaFaro on bass and Stan Levey on drums.
Richie had recently been with the Kenton band and he would sometimes sub for tenor saxophonist Bob Cooper with Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse Café All-Stars around this time with Scotty sitting in on bass during the last set of the evening at the club. Victor and Stan were already members of Howard’s group.
In the spring of 1959, Scott LaFaro went out on tour with the Stan Kenton band and when he came back he kept talking about this cool tune that Joe Coccia had arranged for the band entitled – you guessed it – Nightingale. It was a feature for Kenton trombonist Archie LeCoque.
Richie may have also known of the tune from his time on the Kenton band.
He and Scotty taught it to Victor.
In the fall of 1959, Richie and Victor joined drummer Shelly Manne’s quintet for a two week engagement at the Black Hawk in San Francisco
One of the tunes that Shelly’s group recorded in performance at The Black Hawk was none other than Nightingale.
And there the matter stood until over 50 years later when Eric kindly sent me the advanced copy of his group’s latest CD which forms the basis for this review.
The opening track on the disc is Eric’s swinging version of Nightingale which you can hear on the following video.
It really is a small world after all, especially when you pay attention to the details.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
William "Count" Basie 1904-1984: A Tribute
We wanted visitors to JazzProfiles to be able to tap their toe, snap their fingers or shake their ... whatever ... while on the site and what better way to enable this than to have some Bill Basie and Neal Hefti available.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
André George Previn KBE – Pianist, Composer, Conductor – GENIUS
André George Previn KBE – Pianist, Composer, Conductor – GENIUS
© -Steven Cerra , copyright protected; all rights
I recently came across a copy of the 1996 Ballads CD that André Previn made for Angel Records and from which the above photograph by Joanne O’Brien is taken.
The CD was nestled right next to a slew of solo piano and trio recordings that André had made for Les Koenig’s Contemporary Records label, primarily in the 1950s and 60s.
André plays beautiful, solo piano on the Ballads disc and while wondering how I came to know about the recording n the first place, I found a post-it note affixed to the CD insert booklet that referred me to an article in the late Gene Lees ’ Jazzletter, a self-owned, monthly publication that Gene authored for almost thirty years until his passing in April/2010.
Friends since 1959, Gene shared this background about André in the introduction to his essay entitled The Courage of Your Tastes: Reflection on André Previn:
“In 1950, while he was in the army (along with Chet Baker) and stationed in San Francisco Los Angeles
One of his albums, a lush recording of piano with orchestra and his arrangements, came to a crisis on the date: it was a few minutes short. André went off somewhere and wrote a string chart for some blues, went back into the studio, improvised a theme over it and got a huge hit on Like Young.” [Jazzletter, April 1998, Vol. 17 No. 4, p. 1]
Later in his piece on André, Gene offers this description of Previn’s playing including comments about it in relationship to the Jazz piano wizardry of Phineas Newborn, Jr. and Art Tatum:
“André really bothered the jazz establishment. He wrote movie scores! How degrading! And he dared to make jazz albums, including some with Shelly Manne that were among the best-selling in jazz history.
He was consistently trashed by the critics. The same thing happened to Phineas Newborn. There was an enormous suspicion in the jazz critical establishment of high skill. So vicious was this that, in Oscar Peterson's opinion, it drove Phineas Newborn mad. He said to Oscar, in tears, "Oscar, what am I doing wrong?' Nothing. He just had more technique as a pianist than the jazz critics, most of them, had as writers. And criticism is always an act of projected self-justification.
Thus those writers who lacked facility in their own work made much of "soul" and operated on the fatuous premise that high skill precluded it. You will not encounter this attitude in those who really know music and can really write. It is too often overlooked that Charlie Parker and Bill Evans had electrifying technique. But both men were heroin addicts, which fact enables that covert self-congratulation that is an essential ingredient of pity — as opposed to the nobility of true compassion — and in turn permits a patronizing praise.
André immensely successful, suffered from the judgment of jazz critics. The 1988 New Grove Dictionary of Jazz concludes a shortish entry on him with: "Although he is not an innovator, Previn is a technically fluent and musical jazz pianist." That takes care of that. Dismissed. The entry also describes Andre" as "influenced by Art Tatum." This egregious bit of stupidity almost always recurs in discussions of jazz pianists with well-developed technique, no one more than Oscar Peterson. When I was working on my biography of Oscar, I said to André "I don't hear much of Tatum in Oscar." André said, "I don't hear any."
Nor do I, nor did I ever, in André work. He uses none of Tatum's runs, none of his licks, none of his methods. This sort of comment by jazz critics almost invariably is a manifestation of deep ignorance of classical piano training and literature, which demand utter fluency in scales and arpeggios.
If you really want to hear the scope of André piano technique, listen to his 1992 RCA recording with violinist Julie Rosenfeld and cellist Gary Hoffman of the diabolically difficult Ravel Trio and the Debussy Trio No. 1 in G. If you do, observe the difference in sonority he educes from the piano for these often-linked but disparate composers.” [Ibid, p.3, paragraphing modified]
And Gene had this to say about André’s playing on some of the Jazz recordings that he made later in his career including his work on Ballads:
“… what struck me most was the growth in André’s playing. …. And André’s facility was no longer his enemy. He was using his remarkable skills as a pianist to dig in. His playing was far more reflective and certainly more emotional than in the years of his early prominence. It was deeper, darker than I had ever heard it; and yet at the same time the quicksilver tone had become more scintillant than ever. And oh! has he got chops. All kinds of chops: phenomenal speed, an exquisite illusion of legato in slow chordal passages, balance, and more. He has a subtle control of dynamics that at least equals that of Bill Evans. Bill's dynamics, however, were — deliberately; it was an element of his style — within a comparatively small range. Bill rarely took a whacking good thump at the piano, and André does. In this, then, his dynamic scope is broader than Bill's.
I realize with something of a start that a man who is (if Mel Powell was right) our greatest symphony conductor was also one of our greatest jazz pianists. What? Yeah. …
André told me at that time that he was thinking of making a solo piano album, all ballads. I told him I hoped that he would, and forgot about it. Then Alan Bergman, the great (with his wife, Marilyn) lyricist, told me on the phone that I just had to hear an album by André’ simply called Ballads. …
Reflective and soft, harmonically urbane, it became instantly one of my favorite albums, one that I will listen to often ova the years. It comprises all standards, except for two tunes by André, In Our Little Boat and Dance of Life. The latter is one he wrote for a show he did with Johnny Mercer in London
Listening closely to the Ballads album, one learns something about his work as a symphony conductor. André has an uncanny control of dynamics in his solo piano. He can go loud-soft more suddenly and subtly than anyone I know. And his rubato is always true rubato: the time that is "robbed" (which is what the word means) here is replaced there. And no matter how slow the tempo, if you find the center of it and start tapping your foot you will find that his time is immovably there.
And this is true of his conducting. He uses, indeed, both of these abilities. And now, having listened so closely to the Ballads album, and then revisiting some of my favorites among his symphonic albums, I am beginning to see what Mel Powell meant; I think I am reaching the point where I might be able to spot a Previn recording of a symphony just by its sound, for he uses dynamics and rubato like no conductor I have ever heard. What André is, then, is a shaper of time, a sculptor of sound. …
A genius, a word I never use lightly, is itinerant among us.” [Ibid., excerpts from pp. 4-6]
To conclude this piece on the genius that is André George Previn, KBE, here are the introductory portions of Les Koenig’s liner notes to his Contemporary LPs My Fair Lady, Pal Joey and Gigi followed by a video tribute to André which uses as its soundtrack, Previn’s performance of Zip from Pal Joey as accompanied by Red Mitchell on bass and Shelly Manne on drums.
MY FAIR LADY
“GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, in Pygmalion, from which My Fair Lady is adapted, proved that the difference between a Cockney girl and a fine lady was mainly one of pronunciation. In his fable, Henry Higgins teaches the girl to speak English, thereby working a startling transformation in her. Actually the language she speaks remains the same. The difference is almost entirely a matter of accent.
And coincidentally it is also largely a matter of accent by which the wonderfully original and entertaining score written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe for My Fair Lady has been transformed by Shelly Manne & His Friends to a wonderfully original and entertaining modern jazz album. In the main, the melodies and the harmonies remain unchanged. But not the accent, the rhythm, the phrasing, the way the notes are attacked. It is still My Fair Lady, of course. But it is, at the same time, modern jazz at its best.
The sources of jazz have always been many and varied. The late Jelly Roll Morton claimed Tiger Rag was derived from an old French quadrille, so it should not be too surprising to find modern musicians finding jazz in Ascot Gavotte fifty years later. And in any case jazzmen have always turned to Broadway. The sophisticated melodic and harmonic material in the works of the Gershwins, Cole Porter or Jerome Kern have always stimulated creative jazz musicians to improvise original, entertaining, and often moving performances. It usually takes a very long time, however, before jazzmen accept show tunes, and accord them the honor of a jazz treatment. "Jazz standards" are usually some time in the making. A case in point is Rodgers & Hart's My Funny Valentine which originally appeared in 1937 and had to wait over fifteen years before the modern jazz movement gave it new life in the '50s. And so it is a tribute to the My Fair Lady score that within a few months of the show's opening, such gifted jazzmen as Shelly Manne, André Previn and Leroy Vinnegar were moved to play it.
Let André Previn explain the Friends' approach: ‘What Shelly, Leroy and I have attempted in this album is unusual insofar as we have taken almost the entire score of a musical, not just 'Gems from . . , have adapted it to the needs of the modern jazz musician and are playing it with just as much care and love as the Broadway cast. There has been no willful distortion of the tunes simply to be different, or to have a gimmick, or to provoke the saying 'Where's the melody?' We are all genuinely fond of every tune and have the greatest respect for the wonderful score in its original form, but we are paying our own sincere compliment to the show by playing the complete score in our own métier.’”
“THERE IS A STORY, apocryphal perhaps, about John O'Hara, author of the original Pal Joey stories, and author of the book of the Broadway musical, who, when asked to describe the show, is said to have replied, "Well it ain't Blossom Time." Those familiar with the sentimentality of the Sigmund Romberg musical should get a pretty fair idea of what Pal Joey is not, and possibly, by indirection, what it is. Incidentally, when Blossom Time appeared on Broadway in 1924, Mr. Romberg was the subject of much discussion for adapting various Schubert themes for his score, particularly for waltzing about with a section of the Unfinished Symphony.
In any case, André Previn & His Pals, who are noted for their transformations of Broadway scores into modern jazz, haven't as yet got around to Blossom Time, but they have most certainly applied their alchemy to Pal Joey, and again, in describing the results, one is tempted to repeat Mr. O'Hara.
Pal Joey made his original appearance (in The New Yorker) as the semi-literate writer of a series of letters to his Pal Ted, a successful swing musician and band leader of the late 1930s. Joey was a singer and M.C. in a Chicago South Side club, too much on the make for success and girls, "mice" he called them. Not a pleasant character, but understandable, as John O'Hara drew him. In 1940, O'Hara went to work on the musical version of Joey with the late, great lyricist Larry Hart, and composer Richard Rodgers, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The show opened in New York
THE PALS' PERFORMANCES were completely improvised at the two recording sessions. Before doing each tune, André played it straight, and then the floor was thrown open for discussion. Various possible jazz versions were explored, and once the tempo and general approach were agreed upon, the actual recording was usually accomplished in one take. This technique relies heavily on free association and the artists' unconscious. With musicians of the Pals' caliber, it makes for an unusually fresh and original approach.”
GIGI
“GIGI, BY FRENCH NOVELIST COLETTE, first appeared during the last war when the author was 70. She died in August, 1954, at the age of 81, after a small sip of champagne, having lived to see her slender story of a turn-of-the-century Paris
Gigi's phenomenal public acceptance is remarkable when one considers the original is no more than an extended short story of some sixty-odd pages. It has been translated into many languages, was a French film starring Daniele Delorme in 1950, became a hit play in 1952, dramatized by Anita Loos and launching Audrey Hepburn, Colette's own discovery for the role of Gigi, as a great new star. Now, in 1958, it is a hit musical for MGM , starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, and Louis Jourdan; and by way of the score for the film, it provides Andre Previn & His Pals: Shelly Manne & Red Mitchell, with their latest modern jazz version of a current musical entertainment.
The score for Gigi is by lyricist Alan Jay Lerner (he also wrote the screenplay) and composer Frederick Loewe, who put their special brand of magic to work on their first project since My Fair Lady. And like My Fair Lady, it gives André a chance to apply his own magic to turning eight new Lerner-Loewe songs to modern jazz. As a matter of fact, the new fashion of doing jazz versions of Broadway and Hollywood musicals owes its existence to that now famous first My Fair Lady album (Contemporary C3527) recorded by Shelly Manne & His Friends: André Previn & Leroy Vinnegar in the Fall of 1956, and still heading the best-seller lists. The Friends followed Lady with Li'I Abner (Contemporary C3533). Then André Previn & His Pals: Shelly Manne & Red Mitchell made their best-selling version of Pal Joey (Contemporary C3543).
It was not surprising that André chose to record a jazz Gigi because, as musical director of the film, he supervised all of Gigi's music, adapting much of the Lerner-Loewe material for the background score, doing a number of the arrangements, and conducting the MGM studio orchestra. In truth, this album was projected even before Lerner & Loewe had written the score. They had been delighted with the Friends' Lady, and had a copy of it in their Paris
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