Listenin' to Jazz and Conversation

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Lonson, Sep 1, 2016.

  1. dennis the menace

    dennis the menace Forum Veteran

    Location:
    Montréal
    Thelonious Monk - `Round Midnight: The Complete Blue Note Singles (1947-1952) (Blue Note B-002-1693-02)

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  2. dennis the menace

    dennis the menace Forum Veteran

    Location:
    Montréal
    XRCD is not bad either...IMHO, it`s one of the best sounding Blue Note title in the Audio Wave XRCD series.
     
  3. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I find the ECM sound often subtracts from and obscures the sound of the music on the recordings. I'm not talking about "adding" anything to the music. If anything the ECM recordings add the ECM house sound to all music regardless of how or by whom or in what way it was played. They didn't always sound that way. Conference of the Birds doesn't sound that way; Music for 18 Musicians doesn't sound that way -- very different sorts of music, but not presented with the transient attacks of the instruments rounded off, or the whole proceedings bathed in obscuring reverb. I know there's music recorded for ECM that may be made specifically for or consistent with the sonic aesthetic the label maintains, including some jazz records. Leo Smith's records for the label kind of fit the mold. And when he does contemporaneous records for other labels, like the music he does for Cuneiform, aesthetically the sonic are in a similar mold. But when you hear recordings of the same artists for other labels or in other contexts more or less contemporaneously, they sound different. But often I find that ECM sonic homogenizing, gauze filtering machinery to be really additive, intrusive and off-putting. Like I said, something I have to listen around.
     
  4. Fischman

    Fischman RockMonster, ClassicalMaster, and JazzMeister

    Location:
    New Mexico
    Russell Malone - Russell Malone
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    Mark Whitfield - 7th Avenue Stroll
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    I love jazz guitar, and while I could spend all day with Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, and Kenny Burrell, it's also nice to spend some time with some of the younger lions of the genre. Russell Malone and Mark Whitfield are two of the latter generation of the instrument who have put out some fine music, gaining recognition for their talents early in their careers beginning in the early 1990s. Both are technically astounding and have a largely traditional approach borne of deep immersion in the history of their instrument and its music. It can be derivative, but they do each have their own style, voice, and they brought some new life into the traditional thread of jazz guitar. Musicological analysis aside, I'm generally happy to listen to any of the better albums by either of these artists.

    Just for fun, here's Whitfield and Malone, along with the great Pat Martino and Chuck Loeb in a jaw dropping guitar summit paying homage to Wes Montgomery.
     
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  5. Tim 2

    Tim 2 MORE MUSIC PLEASE

    Location:
    Alberta Canada
    :shh:
     
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  7. Fender Relic

    Fender Relic Forum Resident

    Location:
    PennsylBama
    Tribute,thanks for posting this.
     
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  8. Reid Smith

    Reid Smith Forum Resident

    Location:
    N Ky/Cincinnati
    Some beautiful music from Charlie Haden and Hank Jones
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  9. caio vaz

    caio vaz Senior Member

    Location:
    Brasil
    Cool jazz time!!
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  10. dennis the menace

    dennis the menace Forum Veteran

    Location:
    Montréal
    Charlie Parker - Charlie Parker With Strings: The Master Takes (Verve 314 523 984-2)

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  11. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    The Staying Inside Guide: Jazz Performances That Stand the Test of Time
    From the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, they capture not only the sounds and sights of jazz, but—more important—its feeling and deep inner essence.


    By
    Will Friedwald

    April 7, 2020 4:19 pm ET

    To fully enjoy both the spontaneity and the intimacy of jazz, you have to be—as the musical “Hamilton” would say—in the room where it happens. Obviously, that’s a challenge these days, when neither musicians nor listeners get around much anymore. So it’s reassuring to remember that over nearly all of jazz’s century-plus history, film and video have played a vital role in both documenting and disseminating the music. Here is a short list of classic videos, all readily available on YouTube and other platforms, that brilliantly and excitingly capture not only the sound of jazz and the sight of it, but—more important—its feeling and deep inner essence.

    “Jammin’ the Blues”(1944)

    If you can watch only one jazz film ever, let this be it. In August 1944, the budding jazz impresario Norman Granz (who had just produced the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert) assembled an outstanding band that was built around the tenor saxophone colossus Lester Young and also included trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison and saxophonist Illinois Jacquet, instructing them to play two blues (one slow and one fast) and a standard (“On the Sunny Side of the Street”). The results were remarkable, not only for the amazing playing of Young, but for the artful way in which they were captured by director and veteran Life magazine photographer Gjon Mili—from the opening visual, a seemingly abstract image of concentric circles that turn out to be the top of Young’s signature porkpie hat, to the way he transmutes a repeated phrase of the blues played by Edison into multiple images of the trumpeter. It’s hard to think of any musical film that’s as much of a treat for the eyes as this one.

    “The Sound of Jazz”(1957)

    Jazz’s finest hour on television. Robert Herridge produced this exuberant live show for the CBS series “The Seven Lively Arts,” and hired Nat Hentoff and Whitney Balliett as consultants to pick the talent and the tunes. To give a vivid picture of both the diversity and the overall continuity of the music, they focused on the blues, the traditional and the modern, the up- and the down-tempo, the sung and the swung, played by a wide variety of the best musicians then active. The emphasis was on Count Basie, with many storied veterans of his band as well as sympathetic modernists like Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan and Jimmy Giuffre. Young’s unexpected and exquisite improvisation on his longtime partner Billie Holiday’s epic nine-minute reading of “Fine and Mellow” is one that music students have been memorizing ever since. Herridge and director Jack Smight achieve the stated objective better than anyone has before or since, to capture the energy and the feeling of live jazz and improvisation with the television camera. Through masterful staging and rhythmic editing, soloists like Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Roy Eldridge are endowed with a commanding visual presence that’s equal parts Shakespearean orator and heavyweight prizefighter.


    “The Sound of Miles Davis”(1959)

    While Miles Davis was in the middle of recording “Kind of Blue,” the most celebrated jazz album of all time, the already iconic trumpeter and trendsetter took time off to perform some music from it on CBS TV. The first part features Davis’s legendary 1959 sextet, co-starring saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley; the second spotlights the collaboration of Davis and arranger-composer-conductor Gil Evans in three big-band numbers from the 1957 “Miles Ahead” album. Kudos to producer and host Herridge, who obviously was well aware of how important this music would be to history. This is the only time Davis’s legendary sextet and his collaboration with Evans were ever filmed, and we’re doubly lucky that the staging and photography of Herridge and his crew are at the same consistently high level as the music.

    “Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim”(1967)

    This third of five annual Sinatra specials found the greatest of American male singers sharing the stage with two giants of music who inspired him to reach a pinnacle beyond even his usual Olympian heights. The three numbers with Brazilian maestro Antônio Carlos Jobim were an amazing change of pace for the Chairman and representative of a classic album, while the extended duet section with Ella Fitzgerald, which climaxes in “The Lady is a Tramp,” is a tantalizing promise of the greatest album Sinatra was never able to make—his long-desired collaboration project with the First Lady of Song.
     
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  12. StarThrower62

    StarThrower62 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Syracuse, NY
    For me, many of the recordings sound wonderful. I don't own too many that sound overly fuzzy or murky. I think I remember Metheny's Rejoicing sounding like that but it's been a long time since I listened. I don't like the sound of most Blue Note albums, but as you said we have to listen past the production and get into the music.
     
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  13. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Right, just have to listen around it. And in this day and age when so few record companies produce new jazz, thank goodness for ECM (and Pi, and Cunieform and Aum Fidelty, and Firehouse 12, and Thirsty Ear and Clean Feed and Intakt, etc)., which seems sufficiently capitalized, has major distribution, and continues to release adventurous new jazz.
     
  14. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I've probably returned to this music as much or more as I have any music of any sort by anybody over the course of my life. My favorite. We played this stuff as dinning music at our wedding.
     
  15. Beatnik_Daddyo'73

    Beatnik_Daddyo'73 Music Addiction Personified

    ...no music playing yet, but I did a little quarantine shopping. Really looking forward to receiving these.


    Woody Shaw ‎– Blackstone Legacy
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    Label:
    Contemporary Records ‎– CCD-7627/28-2
    Format:
    CD, Album, Reissue, Remastered
    Country:
    US
    Released:
    1999


    Prince Lasha Quintet Featuring Sonny Simmons ‎– The Cry!
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    Label:
    Original Jazz Classics ‎– OJCCD-1945-2, Contemporary Records ‎– S-7610
    Series:
    Original Jazz Classics Limited Edition Series
    Format:
    CD, Album, Limited Edition, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo
    Country:
    US
    Released:
    2001

    Blue Mitchell ‎– The Cup Bearers
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    Label:

    Original Jazz Classics ‎– OJCCD-797-2, Riverside Records ‎– RLP-9439
    Format:
    CD, Album, Reissue, Remastered
    Country:
    US
    Released:
    1993
     
  16. StarThrower62

    StarThrower62 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Syracuse, NY
    I don't have the Blue Mitchell, but the other two are great albums!
     
  17. Beatnik_Daddyo'73

    Beatnik_Daddyo'73 Music Addiction Personified

    ...I agree and I finally found affordable pressings on CD. I’m a big fan of the front line of Blue and Junior Cook. Their time with Horace Silver is some of my favorite jazz.
     
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  18. WorldB3

    WorldB3 Forum Resident

    Location:
    On the continent.
    Agree, I really love the next one Tribute. Not familiar with his other late 70's - early 80's ECM output. Those four 80's Soul Note records are amazing.
     
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  19. WorldB3

    WorldB3 Forum Resident

    Location:
    On the continent.
    The song 3/4 In The Afternoon is a classic.
     
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  20. WorldB3

    WorldB3 Forum Resident

    Location:
    On the continent.
    Tidal head phone listening last night.

    Bill Frisell & Thomas Morgan - Small Town

    I was really impressed with this and will pick up a physical copy when I can. Think I will crank up my copy of Frisell's East/West a little later.

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  21. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    I do find it interesting that "Bird with Strings" may be the most popular and widely played Bird after all of these years. I base that on the number of used copies that I see, not on any statistics.

    It turns out that Bird (with the support from Norman Granz, who embraced the concept) was correct in his decision.

    I like it too, and play it fairly often.

    My wife enjoyed the Bird Festival that ran in my house for several weeks a while back.

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    Last edited: Apr 9, 2020
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  22. Six String

    Six String Senior Member

    NP Tomasz Stanko Qt. - Lontano. (ECM)
    One of my favorites by Stanko and a lot of it is the trio playing with them.
     
  23. Robitjazz

    Robitjazz Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liguria, Italy
    ECM catalog has developed an increasing strong European imprint, too much for my tastes though with some relevant exceptions (Jarrett Trio). Jazz has become an universal language and it is a good thing to find an Italian popular melody on Italian jazz musicians' phrasing, (for instance Rava, Fresu, Enrico Pieranunzi, Nunzio Rotondo etc..) but I don't like if their music loses its relation to Afro-American background that I consider essential.
    Otherwise I prefer to listen to European music, folk or classical, for instance Anglo Celtic Folk also partially electrified (Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny) or classical composers like Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Beethoven and so on.
    Obviously I don't consider all European jazz released for ECM bad stuff. However it must be a balance: well generally Michael Mantler, Eberhard Weber or Terje Rypdal, much less interesting Arve Henriksen.
     
    Last edited: Apr 9, 2020
  24. Ant G

    Ant G Senior Member

    Location:
    NY
    I am sure they are magnificent!
     
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