"Weird Means Something You Never Heard Before": Rolling Jazz D-bag Thread 2015

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CONCORD MUSIC GROUP CELEBRATES 40th ANNIVERSARY
OF LEGENDARY TONY BENNETT/BILL EVANS SESSIONS
WITH FOUR-LP BOX SET:
THE COMPLETE TONY BENNETT/BILL EVANS RECORDINGS
DUE OUT APRIL 28.

180-gram vinyl package contains alternate takes and bonus tracks.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Forty years ago, renowned entertainer Tony Bennett joined together with legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans for their first of two duet albums. The result was 1975’s The Tony Bennett / Bill Evans Album, followed by Together Again the following year. To celebrate this incredible coupling of talents, Fantasy Records, a unit of Concord Music Group, will release a deluxe, 180-gram vinyl box set. Venerated as a special moment in the history of jazz, the two albums, plus two discs’ worth of alternate takes and bonus tracks, are combined in this four-LP, 180-gram vinyl collection, The Complete Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Recordings. Included is a collectible 12x12 photograph of the two musicians, as well as a deluxe 12-page booklet featuring rare images and extensive liner notes by Will Friedwald (co-author of Tony Bennett’s autobiography, The Good Life).

This unique pairing began with 1975’s The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album, recorded during an intimate session at Fantasy Studios (producer Helen Keane and an engineer were the only other people present). At work in equal partnership, Bennett and Evans selected the tunes, worked out the arrangements semi-spontaneously, and, later, picked the final takes to be used. Bennett recalls that the pair didn't even discuss song choices before the session: “I would name a tune, and Bill would say, ‘That's good, let’s do that.’ We'd find a key and then the two of us would work it out.”

The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album features a selection of classics from the Great American Songbook (“The Days of Wine and Roses,” “Young and Foolish,” “The Touch of Your Lips”), as well as a moving rendition of the Evans’ classic tune "Waltz for Debby" (with lyrics written by Gene Lees). A consistently enthusiastic and balanced musical team, Bennett and Evans shine both individually and in tandem.

Following the recording, the pair performed live on a number of occasions and made several television appearances, including a stop on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.

In 1976, Bennett and Evans returned to the studio for Together Again. Another low-lights, high-improv date of standards that opens with an Evans solo rendition of “The Bad and the Beautiful” and continues with such moving renditions of “Lucky to Be Me,” “You’re Nearer,” and “You Don't Know What Love Is.” Another Evans original, “The Two Lonely People” (with lyrics by Carol Hall), also graces the playlist.

Both sessions — in which Bennett and Evans recorded together in the same room, not in isolation booths (a recording preference that Bennett has practiced throughout his recording career)— yielded several fine alternate takes that are included, as well as bonus tracks from the second date.

With such palpable energy and nearly telepathic interplay, these recordings have garnered critical awe over the years since their release. London’s The Guardian noted in 2009, “The outcome of this intimate duet highlighted the sublime creative accompanist in Evans, and the deep jazz sensitivities of the vocal legend … the two sound as if they’re having the time of their lives.” The BBC mused, “It seems impossible that these two giants of understated musical sophistication went into the studio with no idea of what they would record … They plucked one definitive performance after another out of thin air to produce a nine-track album — called, with straightforward simplicity, The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album — that was bettered only by its solitary follow-up, the following year’s Together Again.” AllMusic simply called the collaboration an “excellent jazz-pop hybrid in which both musicians were shown off to advantage.”

The Complete Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Recordings joins several recent and forthcoming releases, celebrating the career of Bill Evans. Aside from a handful of reissued albums on vinyl, fans can also look forward to CD box set reissues The Complete Riverside Recordings and The Complete Fantasy Recordings this spring and fall, respectively. Also available is the highly acclaimed deluxe LP box set The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961, which hit store shelves in the fall of 2014.

maybe this will be the album that makes me understand the appeal of tony bennett?

Have you never previously heard the Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album?

i have not. i haven't heard all kinds of stuff. i take it this is something i should rectify? I'll queue it up now.

It's great IMO, but you kind of need low lights and a glass of whiskey to enjoy it

evans sounds great on contact but i guess i'm never gonna get bennett
and it's not an aversion to old white guys; i dig mel torme
bennett always sounds weirdly strained and uptight to me

I come at it from the opposite perspective, sort of; I remember finding Bennett innocuously pleasurable when he had his "Tony Bennett is hip now!" moment in the early '90s. (I bought the Steppin' Out album.) On the other hand, when he's not playing behind Miles Davis, Bill Evans puts me right the fuck to sleep. I will definitely be passing on this one.

good interview with Mike Clark here, it's interesting how conscious he was of getting typecast as a funk drummer with Herbie (to the point where he was reticent about taking the gig), and that even then he had to fight to get his signature linear on record: http://www.thetrapset.net/past-episodes/

*linear beats

that interview was very informative in terms of vocabulary! i liked how he talked frankly about what bores him too.

Mike Clark is the kind of drummer who makes me just want to give up. Psyched to listen to that interview though.

one of the best shows i saw in college was a band of his (billed as the Headhunters i think) with Larry Goldings, Paul Jackson, Bill Summers, Fred Wesley, and Skerik.

FWIW, listened to the beginning, and I like the host's point about jazz drummers who can't play funk, but I also find that I like Mike Clark playing funk much better than playing any "swing-feel" jazz.

when he's not playing behind Miles Davis, Bill Evans puts me right the fuck to sleep

And there was I thinking everybody digs Bill Evans

agreed, i looked up some clips of him playing straight-ahead on Youtube after listening to it. he sounds great and it's clearly where is heart is, but listening blind it could be any good jazz drummer (although to be fair, it was in the context of workshops with student combos). but his funk style is so distinct.

xp

iirc, Al Foster voiced a similar complaint, about his work with Miles not being where his heart was (brilliant at it though he was).

Bill Evans puts you to the best kind of sleep, is the thing

good call, Al Foster sounds sooo great and committed on those electric Miles records, but i really love his straight-ahead playing too. i like this one (ironically a Miles tribute):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Near,_So_Far_(Musings_for_Miles)

That one looks good; I haven't heard it, but will check it out. I really like his playing on Tommy Flanagan's Giant Steps; having only heard his electric Miles work at the time, I assumed it was a different Al Foster.

Love Al Foster w Miles, not that familiar otherwise. Evans was maybe better when responding to a leader or guest, rather than just leading his own basic combos. Also like his group's album with Stan Getz, speaking of quality snoozing/midnight mixed drink reveries.

I don't see how anyone could listen to his trio with motian and lafaro and say he was better as a sideman. Some opinions are just blatantly ridiculous.

haven't heard that, will check (said "maybe")

What Bill Evans did you not like? I don't want to be snarky about it, I'm just saying that's like the most famous bill Evans solo material so it might be premature to write him off if you haven't heard it. I'd start with the village vanguard material. With the lights low.

I heard the Vanguard material (in box form, not the original albums). Didn't do anything for me. I don't like his approach to the piano; I prefer players who swing harder, and have more of a feeling for the blues. It doesn't help that the trio also included Paul Motian, who might be my least favorite jazz drummer.

I understand what you're saying, because I felt almost exactly the same way when I was younger. I think the thing is if you listen to him wanting Wynton Kelly or Bobby Timmons or even his early idol Bud Powell, you're going to be disappointing. He does something else.

*disappointed

I think the first track I really loved was My Foolish Heart. I like him best on ballads and slower tunes -- there is something a little bit herky-jerky about his feel on mid-tempo swing sometimes, I just don't hold it against him anymore. I don't listen to Monk to hear someone shred Cherokee changes, I don't listen to Oscar Peterson to hear cerebral chord subs, and I don't listen to Chick Corea to feel heartbreak.

otm. I have problems with Paul Motian in other contexts as well, but as far as in the classic Bill Evans Trio lineup, he and Bill and Scott could do no wrong.

Well, to be fair, I'm not a piano trio guy at all, generally speaking. Red Garland, Ahmad Jamal, Matthew Shipp and Cecil Taylor are the only pianists I can listen to and not wish there was a horn player there to liven things up.

Tommy Flanagan is registering and hitting the Flag Post button from his grave.

Jason Moran's using his big group for this Kennedy Center concert (Moran is in DC a lot as he is Kennedy Center's Jazz curator):

Jason Moran's In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall, 1959
Saturday, March 28, 2015, 8:00 PM

Celebrate the legacy of Thelonious Monk as Jason Moran leads The Big Bandwagon in a full-length, multimedia work based on Monk's landmark 1959 concert at New York City's Town Hall

looks pretty great; moran's amazing live

this is the best thing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO0eT6pkNhk

It is.

nice.

I got to see Moran's trio with Sam Rivers guesting at Iridium...wow, 15 years ago, when that album they did together, Black Stars, came out. Great show.

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Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor at Ornette's 85th birthday party.

Love it.

Any more info on that? Can't find anything online

prob a private event?

Yeah, a private event. (N.B.: I wasn't there, though I have been to Ornette's apartment—that's where I interviewed him for his Wire cover story in 2009.)

Oh man I would have loved to have heard that. Glad they're both doing well - didn't Cecil turn 85 just a few months ago

Ornette birthday broadcast on WKCR today:
https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/wkcr/story/ornette-coleman-birthday-broadcast-monday-march-9

The second John Carter/Bobby Bradford album, Self Determination Music, has been remastered and reissued on CD. (I was supposed to write liner notes for it when it was being reissued on International Phonograph, as their first album Flight for Four was; unfortunately, that deal fell through and Ace in the UK decided to hold onto the rights, which means SDM is just in a plain ol' jewel case, not the fancy mini-LP reproduction sleeve Flight got.)

it's official, everybody hates jazz.

http://thejazzline.com/news/2015/03/jazz-least-popular-music-genre/

https://simpsonswiki.com/w/images/thumb/4/42/KJAZZ.png/250px-KJAZZ.png

i wish this was less boring. it's in that weird interzone between composed/produced electronic music and improvised music and it's just not very exciting as either one.

https://soundcloud.com/shigeto/dave-douglas-high-risk-ft-shigeto-molten-sunset

idk, it's cool i guess?

From WSJ: didn't know he was from the Chicago New Thing scene!

Review of Jack DeJohnette’s ‘Made in Chicago’
Jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette goes back to his roots by convening a band featuring all-star musicians from his early days in Chicago.
By
Martin Johnson
March 11, 2015 6:28 p.m. ET

Drummer Jack DeJohnette has been an integral part of the New York area jazz scene for more than 50 years, long enough to forget that he’s originally from Chicago. Before moving east, he participated in the band that gave birth to the Advancement for the Association of Creative Musicians, a collective that has nurtured several generations of great Chicago jazz musicians.

On his new recording, “Made in Chicago” (ECM Records), Mr. DeJohnette goes back to those roots by convening a band featuring all-star musicians from his early days in Chicago; he is joined by saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill and by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams. Each is a renowned innovator and leader who rarely plays sideman gigs. The recording documents an August 2013 concert by the band in Millennium Park during the Chicago Jazz Festival. The band will perform Thursday night at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and again this summer at the Newport Jazz Festival on Aug. 1.

In the early ’60s, Mr. DeJohnette, who is 72 years old, was a classmate of Mr. Threadgill, 71, and Mr. Mitchell, 74, at Wilson Junior College (now Kennedy-King College) on Chicago’s South Side. They played music together in school settings and at the many jam sessions that took place in the city’s jazz clubs and lounges. It was at one of these sessions that Mr. DeJohnette met Mr. Abrams, now 84, who led an ensemble called the Experimental Band; fittingly for its name, it functioned as a workshop for musicians with ideas that didn’t fit into the jazz mainstream. Messrs. DeJohnette, Threadgill and Mitchell all played in the band, which featured a varying roster of musicians and ultimately grew into the AACM in 1965.

The Chicago Jazz Festival invited Mr. DeJohnette to create a project of his choosing in honor of his appointment as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. On “Made in Chicago,” the four jazz greats are joined by veteran bassist Larry Gray, who is also a native of Chicago’s South Side.

The set list consists of Mr. Mitchell’s “Chant,” which has been staple of his repertoire for 40 years, and one less-familiar tune each by Messrs. Mitchell, Threadgill, Abrams and DeJohnette. It closes with an improvised jam. There are stellar moments throughout the recording. For instance, Mr. Mitchell’s tense coiled sounds are offset beautifully on “Chant” by Mr. Abrams’s ruminative piano chords. The pianist and the drummer engage in a powerful duet in Mr. DeJohnette’s “Museum of Time.” And Mr. Threadgill’s pungent alto saxophone is heard on several pieces.

But the record falls prey to the issues that mar many “supergroup” recordings. The product of only a few days of rehearsals, it is an uneven affair; there are moments of sublime synthesis followed quickly by moments where the playing feels measured and less assertive. Yet the best parts are intriguing. Save for some gems on imprints like Nessa and Delmark, Chicago’s avant-garde jazz scene of the ’60s was under-recorded, and this album—though made a half-century later—offers a glimpse into what might have been heard during some of those Experimental Band gigs.

At Mr. Abrams’s urging, Mr. DeJohnette moved to New York in 1964 and quickly found elite-level work, playing in bands led by saxophonists Jackie McLean, Charles Lloyd and Wayne Shorter. In 1969, he joined Miles Davis’s band, playing on the classic “Bitches Brew” sessions. During the ’70s, Mr. DeJohnette made his mark not only with his own group, Special Edition, a showcase for several up-and-coming saxophonists, but with New Directions, which featured such top players as guitarist John Abercrombie and trumpeter Lester Bowie. Much of Mr. DeJohnette’s time since the early ’80s has been spent performing with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio, which has become one of the most popular groups in jazz.

Messrs. Threadgill and Abrams also moved to New York in the early ’70s and still live there. Mr. Mitchell spent some time in Europe before settling first in Michigan and now in Oakland, Calif., where he teaches at Mills College. It is easy to hear the Chicago roots in their sound, but not so much in Mr. DeJohnette’s—and I suspect that is the point of “Made in Chicago.” He shows his Windy City side, and it adds a new, introductory chapter to the lengthy discography of a great jazz drummer.

Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/arts/music/50-years-on-association-for-advancement-of-creative-musicians-influences-jazz.html

NY Times covered them too.

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idk, it's cool i guess?

― lil urbane (Jordan), Wednesday, March 11, 2015

The question mark says it all. Haven't heard the effort yet. Saw Shigeto once and enjoyed but wasn't wowed.