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Day 42. Leon Parker, Beethoven, Bach and more Beethoven (maybe).

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

I couldn’t get the girls downstairs tonight for any picks, so I grabbed Leon Parker’s ‘Belief’, then my set of Wilhelm Kempff’s recordings of the Beethoven Piano Concertos (with Berlin and Ferdinand Leitner… one of TWO complete recordings I have with Kempff)… then I grabbed the Harmonia Mundi box set of Kenneth Gilbert’s Bach keyboard works… then Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations by Alfred Brendel (on Vox Box)… then I decided ‘well, maybe I’ll get through all the Brendel Beethoven solo piano works’. As everything sits right now I am done with Leon Parker and the Kempff recordings, and am about halfway through the Kenneth Gilbert. We’ll see how far I get tonight (the Brendel stack is 15 CDs… I’ll be surprised if I finish them).

Leon Parker’s disc is one of my favorite non-avant-garde contemporary jazz discs. That’s a lot of qualifiers, but I think most serious jazz listeners can understand (if not agree) with the need for them. ‘Belief’ is a very accessible disc but at the same time doesn’t fit into the ‘rock with words’ world of most mainstream jazz. There are elements of 20th century minimalism, some sharp, punctuated horn playing, and lots of good percussion (which is what Leon Parker plays). The album closes off with a great, sparse version of ‘In a Sentimental Mood’, but the stand out on the album is ‘Calling Out’. After buildup and crash of cymbals, a percussive ostinato starts up, followed by additional layers of vocal patterns that keep getting added to create a dense vocal / percussive heterophony that certainly owes quite a bit to West African music.

But right now I have the Beethoven concertos on. I love Wilhem Kempff’s playing. And these performances (and recordings) are beautiful. One of my fondest orchestra memories was playing the 5th concerto one summer. Steve (another bass player who also actively performed in a Black Sabbath cover band) taps my shoulder with his bow during one of the piano solo parts in the first movement during a rehearsal. I turn around, and he is pretending to tap his bass strings a la an Eddie Van Halen solo, in perfect rhythm to the soloist. Of course – Steve completely called it. This IS the Eddie Van Halen solo music of the 18th century (and I mean that in the best, most bad ass way it can be taken – early Van Halen shredding at its best). 3 seconds of pantomime summed up Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto for me better then any history book or paper on the piece I ever read.

The Brendel recordings (that I just might get to tonight) are his first recordings of the Beethoven solo repertoire. He would go on to record the sonatas two more times on Phillips (and may have even done one more set as he was preparing to retire… i heard something about that??? did he???). While he later set (from the 90s) is certainly very interesting to listen to, the set on Vox Box is probably my second favorite set (after Kempff’s set). I remember when I bought them… the classical manager at the time scoffed at me for ‘being willing to touch those dirty things’… Vox Box… the dusty budget set in its own rack that he felt didn’t deserve even to be shelved much less purchased. But, the joke is on him. There were some great older recordings that Vox Box put out, and I’m certainly glad I didn’t let his classical snobbery deter me. After he left and I was given more control over classical purchases at the store, the memory of his pricing snobbery bothered me so much that one of the first things I did was order one of every Naxos title. I though then (and still firmly believe) that it shouldn’t cost a fortune to explore classical music. Or any music for that matter… but at least with classical music, you could get to know repertoire for a reasonable price as long as the guy at the counter was willing to suggest those discs to a new customer. Sure, they aren’t always ‘the best’, but they are often quite good and you will get to hear more when you are just starting out that way.

Tags: Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Leon Parker
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Day 37. Harry Connick Jr., and Paolo Conte.

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Tamiko and I first heard Paolo Conte in the movie ‘A Couch In New York’ where ‘Via Con Me’ is used a couple of times as a mood setter. A greatest hits collection came out here in the US a couple years after the movie and I was able to pick up a promo of it. The rest of the disc mostly consisted of cool vocal jazz standards mostly in Italian with smatterings of English here and there… but it was all fun. There are a couple songs on this disc that are dangerous to listen to though. ‘Happy Feet’ WILL get stuck in your head… ‘Boogie’ probably will as well, and since it is mostly in Italian I usually just find myself phonetically making up words to go along with the song. Until the chorus:

HAPPY FEET! DADADA HAPPY FEET! DADADA HAPPY FEET! OH OH I LOVE YAH!

What is he singing about? The chorus doesn’t even make sense! But it doesn’t really matter… so much of his music is driving and infectious, and when there are words that are familiar I feel like I just need to sing along with them.

Whenever I hear him I tend to think about ‘Couch In New York’ which really is a sweet movie. Or rather, I think about me and Tamiko cuddled up on a couch watching it. So I think it is kind of funny that the other artist tonight (who was next to Paolo Conte on the shelf) was Harry Connick Jr. And of course I am talking about ‘When Harry Met Sally’ which takes me back to the earliest years of me and Tamiko dating. We have always been home bodies, and prefer PJs and a movie to going out (especially once we had our own place!). And for New Years Eve, we had a tradition for some time of watching ‘When Harry Met Sally’ up to midnight. I imagine I would have liked Harry Connick Jr. even if he hadn’t done the soundtrack to the movie, but he adds so much to it that I know I liked him more because of his association to it. There is a nostalgia for an older New York in his Sinatra-esque earlier style, and as ‘complicated’ as the story for ‘When Harry Met Sally’ seems to be, it is really very simple and elegant (much like the older couples who are telling their stories throughout the movie).

The three albums I ripped tonight were ‘We Are In Love’, ‘Lofty’s Roach Souffle’ and ‘Red Light, Blue Light’. ‘We Are In Love’ really does seem to try to be a Sinatra record, even down to the Nelson Riddle sounding orchestra in the background. Not much of the New Orleans Harry Connick shows up on this disk. But it is actually a smaller group recording of ‘It’s Alright With Me’ that I think is the stand out track on the disc. Russell Malone has a great role in the tune… starting off with a great strumming accompaniment that leads into a pretty hot guitar solo that is reminiscent of Atlantic Records John Coltrane. Then Shannon Powell and Ben Wolfe trade some short bars between each other before Harry Connick gets his turn. And he really can play some good piano. Part of the reason I think this is my favorite track on the disc is because it really focuses more on the playing of each member of the group (where I feel like the rest of the album is more of a vocal album that feels more like Frank Sinatra). And there is nothing wrong with the singing… but it doesn’t feel as unique to me.

‘Lofty’s Roach Souffle’ was released at the same time as ‘We Are In Love’ (certainly capitalizing on the ‘When Harry Met Sally’ success from the year before). I don’t necessarily think it is a stronger disc musically, but I like listening to it quite a bit more. ‘Lofty’s’ is a trio only disc, and I think you get more of the musicianship that is evident on ‘It’s Alright With Me’. You certainly get much more piano playing and I think that is a good thing.

I still remember the first time I listened to ‘Red Light, Blue Light’ quite vividly though. I got it to surprise Tamiko with, but had to listen to it when I got home from work. So I cracked it open and it starts of with a soft little clarinet melody… and I though my stereo was just turned down low. So I turn it up just in time for the HUGE big band blast. I shot back away from the stereo (I’m a pretty jumpy guy) and landed on my bed, then scrambled to turn the stereo back down again before my speakers blew up on the next hit. The orchestration on this album seemed to be a little more fun to put together then ‘We Are In Love’. Little looser in some ways, and certainly a bit showier. Lots of fun though.

Whenever I put these discs on, the nostalgia I mentioned earlier certainly kicks in. In many ways, these are part of the soundtrack of the early years of Tamiko and Josh (and I even remember putting some of these tracks on the discs that would be played when the band at our wedding was taking a break). Tamiko has asked me a number of times what songs would be on the mix disc of our relationship. The version of ‘A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square’ (with Branford Marsalis singing along with Harry Connick Jr.) would certainly be on that disc. And we’d be in sweats, all cozy on a couch, listening to the song. And ‘Heavenly’ would be the next track – sure, that breaks some serious mix disc rules, but the two songs really do belong right next to each other.

Tags: Harry Connick Jr., Paolo Conte
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Day 32. Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery.

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

I really can’t remember the first time I heard Jimmy Smith, but it must have been after I moved to Berkeley and was working at the Tower Records there. My friend Felix may have mentioned him to me… Felix suggested a lot of jazz to me during my years at the Berkeley store. The first disc of Jimmy Smith’s I picked up was ‘The Sermon’ (which I’ll talk about whenever one of the girls grabs it), but I became fanatic about Jimmy Smith and would pick up a disc or two every pay check for a couple months. When Celia grabbed the two Jimmy Smith / Wes Montgomery albums I have, I was actually surprised how much Jimmy Smith is on my shelf. No complaints here though.

Wes Montgomery was introduced to me from a former roommate James. James ran a guitar shop in Berkeley, and I rented a room from him when I first moved to the Bay Area for about a year. James played lots of jazz guitar, quite a bit of the variety that I generally disliked (Pat Methany, John Scofield, etc.) but ‘Fried Pies’ by Wes Montgomery was the thing he would mostly play when showing off archtop guitars in his shop.

There are a few discs worth of material featuring these artists together, and the style of the tracks fall into one of two categories. There are a number of tracks that are smaller groups that both artists generally performed with. And these tracks are wonderful. They have the typical Jimmy Smith shuffle, and both players seem to branch out a bit. But a number of the tracks feature big band arrangements that just feel stiff and awkward. Unfortunately, these later tracks interspersed with the good ones… so I am starting to wonder. Should I just keep albums organized as albums? Or should I set up playlists that are also my ‘corrections’: in other words, the way these albums should have been put together in the first place.

Tags: Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery
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Day 31. Berio.

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Mira’s love of box-sets (or at least large spines) continues with the second set of Berio Sequenzas I have (on Mode records with other solo pieces), and she also grabbed the DG 20/21 recordings of ‘Sinfonia’ and ‘Coro’.

When I first started grad school, Richard Karpen would gather all of his students together every other week for a group meeting, and often we would listen to a piece and read a score. ‘Coro’ was one of those pieces. The opening five or six minutes begins like a song for voice and piano, then explodes into more typical Berio orchestral colors. I don’t mean the word ‘typical’ here to sound disparaging… but Berio’s orchestral writing has a clear, crisp sound that is one of the more recognizable voices in 20th century writing. His orchestration is almost like some of the great jazz player’s sounds – you can hear Coltrane when he plays tenor sax, and Dizzy Gillespie is the only one that sounds like Dizzy Gillespie. And in the same vain Berio’s orchestral writing can be identified… such a pristine and clear musical voice, even when expressing complex and dense textures. While I had been sent to Berio to look at solo instrumental writing already (mostly through the ‘Sequenzas’), seeing his orchestral scores (and his vocal writing in this piece, which requires the singers to be seated within the orchestra) presented a number of challenges to me. I had just finished an orchestral work a couple years before during by BA at Berkeley, and thought that one of the things I would be doing a lot of at UW would be writing orchestra works. At this meeting, where we all listened to ‘Coro’, the question was thrown at us… ‘Is there anything left for the orchestra to say that is new?’ … and if there is, how do we do it?

I remember thinking that innovation needs work, and that I couldn’t believe that there is ‘nothing left for the orchestra to say’. And I still believe that. The reality that struck me later that year though, was which orchestras want to try and find that new language? Gerard Schwarz (the director of the Seattle Symphony) talked to the music students at UW that year as well, and when asked why he doesn’t program more new music (or even give readings) he given a simple response… he said that he loved programming new music and he listed a number of composers that he liked to program because ‘they gave the audience familiar yet new sounds’. In other words, any composer that may be trying to find something new to say with orchestra won’t be getting played in Seattle while Gerard Schwarz was conducting. It was all ‘new music’ with a romantic voice. As his tenure comes to an end, I wonder if that will change? Are there examples of other major orchestras that do take an adventurous view? How many in the US would even perform ‘Coro’, a work now 35 years old and almost conservative by modern avant-garde tastes? Can a piece like this survive if it isn’t getting played? Is the recording it’s end all be all?

So it is no wonder that most composers work on solo or smaller chamber works. Personally, it is how my work gets performed. I would love to dive into a work for orchestra, but I also can’t imagine working on a piece that may never get played. While ‘Coro’ is a rarity in the concert hall, and we have to rely on a couple of versions to get an idea of what can be done with the work as far as interpretation goes, the Sequenzas have had a much more successful concert life. This second set I have features performances by Stuart Dempster (who the trombone Sequenza was written for) as well as Garth Knox and Irvine Arditti. Some wonderful playing in this set to say the least.

Tags: Garth Knox, Irvine Arditti, Luciano Berio, Stuart Dempster
Posted in Classical, Jazz, Mira | No Comments »

Day 30. Django Reinhardt.

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

I have never been a huge fan of jazz guitar, with a couple of exceptions. Django is the big one. Such amazingly melodic playing on the one hand (actually – the hand with only two fingers that could play) and at times he treats the instrument like it is percussion. Such rhythm and drive.

I came to Django Reinhardt through David Grisman. My dad had ‘Hot Dawg’ (an alum cover that for some reason freaked me out as a kid) and there was a version of ‘Minor Swing’ on it with Stephane Grappelli. When I got older, I realized the song was written by Django and tracked him down. As a teenage guitarist, he thrilled me. A little obscure, a really interesting life story, and his playing really can’t be compared to anyone else. He could do with two fingers on his left hand what most guitarists would probably need ten for!

During my first year working at Tower, I hit the motherlode – an import 10 CD box set that covered his whole recording career. I listened to those discs a lot, but there were two tracks that immediately struck me. They were two interpretations of the Bach D Minor concert for two violins… though at the time I didn’t know it. I just knew the track numbers and loved playing them. The interplay between the violinists was so intricate and the mood really swung (as I would figure out later these were called ‘swing interpretation of the Bach D Minor concerto’). I’ll never forget hearing the Bach concerto a year or so later on the radio and thinking ‘huh! It’s that Django Reinhardt song!’. When the announcer said it was Bach, I was quite surprised… got home and found the discs and sure enough it was Bach credited as the author. They had been playing Bach this entire time! So I went to the Tower on Sunrise in Sacramento (which had more classical music then the Roseville store) and I picked up the Bach violin concertos (which would then sit next to my only other Bach CD at the time – an old E. Power Biggs disc of organ work).

I love that listening to David Grisman led me to Django Reinhardt which then led me to Bach. The music world can have such strange connections sometimes, and that is really one of the wonderful parts of music for me. In our own ways, what we do musically is also a historical connection to music. I’ve studied with people who studied with people that studied with Schönberg, another who studied with Ravel. When I work on a piece with a performer, I also get to work with the things that their teachers and their teacher’s teachers taught them. And when I compose, everything I have ever heard is somehow influencing my musical thinking. And somewhere in there is Django, swinging my decisions.

Tags: Django Reinhardt
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Day 29. Miles Davis, John Coltrane (alone and together).

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

I spent a good part of last night and some time this morning listening to the earlier (Prestige) Miles Davis and John Coltrane set that I ripped last night and today. There were three boxes in all: The Miles Davis Quintet recordings (the first quintet with John Coltrane), ‘Fearless Leader’, the Coltrane Prestige recordings that featured Coltrane as the head of the group (also featuring Red Garland on piano) and ‘Interplay’ which is a Prestige set of recordings with John Coltrane in a supporting role. I am pretty sure I got all of these sets throughout a couple years for Christmas from Tamiko, and they mostly filled in holes from the music from these periods. The Miles Davis boxes (which encompass ‘Workin’ ‘, ‘Smokin’ ‘ and a few other Prestige discs) really are Miles Davis albums. Some of the quintessential cool Miles Davis before he starting doing more recordings for Columbia records. How cool? He does ‘Surrey With A Fringe On Top’ and it’s brilliant. There are other standards mixed in, and the music fuses into what may be Miles’ first REALLY solid group.

The two Coltrane boxes are quite interesting. Nothing on ‘Fearless Leader’ caught me by surprise… I owned a good number of the discs already covered in this set (‘Soultrane’ for instance) and they show Coltrane coming into his own both as a band leader and as THE saxophonist of his generation. There are moments of the brilliance that will come, but for the most part you can see him polishing his early talent. Again, some very cool recordings. But ‘Interplay’ introduced me to some music I hadn’t heard before. The stand out for me were the recordings with Mal Waldron who, for some reason, I hadn’t heard of until I head John Coltrane playing with him. And wow! What a great pianist. I can kind of understand why he was overshadowed at the time… not as idiosyncratic as Monk, and not as polished as Red Garland, but like the other two he has a genuinely unique voice that is recognizable.

The other interesting thing about ‘Interplay’ is there is a certain amount of performance tension that I head among groups that are more or less just getting together for some sessions. The players are figuring out what they are going to do while at the same time learning from other players that they have little experience with. There are a few times were someone tramples over someone else’s solo for instance, but I like the feeling of spontaneity that also comes out of these recordings. You still get lots of Coltrane, but you also get LOTS of others that you may not have heard of before. Fun box to say the least.

In fact, it was while listening to these boxes this morning and last night that the goal of this project – revisiting and rediscovering music that I have – really brought a smile to my face.

Tags: John Coltrane, Mal Waldron, Miles Davis
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Day 26. Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington.

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

Some really nice discs tonight. ‘Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Songbook’ is probably my favorite of the Ella songbook recordings… filled with fun and elegance. It starts off with ‘Rockin’ in Rhythm’ … no lyrics, just some amazing vocalise from Ella in front of a stomping Ellington piano and band. These three discs contain some of the best versions of Ellington’s songs recorded. The ‘Take The A-Train’ and ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing’ are both artists at their best. And while I know this is officially an ‘Ella Fitzgerald’ disc, it is just as much a Duke Ellington disc. In fact, of all the songbooks I think this is the only one where both singer and composer perform together. But what is really special about these recordings is that they are also the first time the two had performed together. When you hear how well they play off each other, it is hard to believe that they had never played together before… the two sound like they have been performing with each other for 30 years, not just a few hours. The two would go on to perform much more with each other fortunately… including the brilliant ‘Cote d’Azur’ recordings (one of my favorite wedding presents from Bryn and Colin).

The Nat King Cole discs are two greatest hits discs. One in English, the other in Spanish. The one in English mostly focuses on Nat King Cole’s vocal side. I still want to track down more of his earlier recordings that featured him more as a pianist, but as a single disc set this is great – with the exception of the Nat King Cole / Natalie Cole ‘duet’ that just creeps me the hell out.

The disc in Spanish is one of my favorite vocal discs though. His accent is rough, but the backing band captures a cuban band style feeling that just makes you want to move your feet. I tracked this disc down after hearing a couple of the tracks in Wong Kar-Wai’s beautiful beautiful movie ‘In The Mood For Love’. I can’t help but picture flowing red curtains every time I put this disc on.

Tags: Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole
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Day 21. Miles Davis.

Monday, February 8th, 2010

‘Miles Davis Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel’ is about eight hours of live music recorded in Dec. 1965, capturing the 7 sets played at the ‘Plugged Nickel’ over two nights (an eighth set was performed without Miles Davis if I remember correctly). It gives a very candid snapshot of Miles Davis and the quintet he is pulling together (with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams). While the group had already started to put out new studio originals, this set is mostly made up of tunes from the previous ten years of Miles’ career, reaching back to the ‘Kind of Blue’ days while at the same time the solos and performances are definitely looking ahead to the harmonic and melodic freedom that is right around the corner.

Even more then the snapshot that these discs capture of Miles’ band, you also get a sense of what life must have been like for a jazz musician playing set after set night after night at this time. There are a number of tunes that are repeated (sometimes in the same night) since it was normal for the audience to change between sets. What I hope would catch just about anyone’s attention is the fact that even though ‘Stella By Starlight’ is played twice in one night, solos can be quite different, and even the basic approach to the tune can change. What I get out of this is just how important it was to the musicians to constantly, within hours even, find a fresh approach to a song, and the name of the game when it came to solos was improvisation in its truest sense. These are workouts for the musicians, building strength for the next big thing.

One of my favorite things about these recordings though is the ambience. You hear glasses clinking, murmurs of speech, and something that occasionally gets picked up by the microphone. During one of Wayne Shorter’s solos, someone near the stage can be heard saying ‘Ah Miles… you are so lucky Miles, you are so lucky’.

Tags: Miles Davis
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Day 20. Art Blakey, Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

‘Time Out’ was one of the first jazz discs I ever heard (my dad had it on record). I also remember learning ‘Take Five’ by ear in the living room of my house as a teenager one afternoon when no one was home. I had been playing alto sax for a little more then a year after 4 years of clarinet. I love the clarinet now and wish I had kept playing it more, but at the time I felt like I was moving up to a cool wind instrument! I was a teenage boy and I just didn’t see the girls going for a myopic clarinetist with a bad hair. A myopic saxophonist with bad hair though had a chance. Anyways, my first memories of hearing ‘Time Out’ come closely on the heals of hearing ‘Blue Train’ and ‘Kind of Blue’, and I had no problem telling people at this point that I liked jazz. And I REALLY did get into jazz at this point. One thing that surprises me a little now though is how well ‘Kind Of Blue’ and ‘Blue Train’ still stand up for me.

While there are some great tracks on ‘Time Out’, the album seems much blander and run of the mill to me now. I heard ‘Blue Rondo A La Turk’ streaming out of a car the other night at the Tacoma Dome while waiting for the girls to pick me up. KPLU plays a lot of Brubeck. In fact, a couple years ago they did a ‘greatest 100 jazz albums of all time’ countdown, and I heard probably the top 10… when they got to number 2 and started to play ‘All Blues’, I was seriously stumped about what could possibly be number 1. Then they introduced ‘Time Out’ and played ‘Take Five’. Now, it is a good song and a good album… but better then Miles Davis with John Coltrane? This moment summed up for me how serious KPLU was about its jazz programming… if ‘Time Out’ is the greatest jazz album of all time in their eyes then … well, there just isn’t a polite way of saying how off these guys are. And for the most part listening to KPLU is like listening to the clean, sanitized version of jazz. It isn’t playing the smooth jazz that KKSF in San Francisco is known for, but it certainly isn’t playing the out there late Coltrane stuff either. It’s nice, safe middle ground jazz for public radio listeners.

I was actually talking to a friend a few months ago about why ‘Blue Train’ and ‘Kind of Blue’ still work for me, but ‘Time Out’ doesn’t. And I think it goes back to that afternoon I spent figuring out ‘Take Five’… I was able to figure it out. The whole album, as it explores different meters, is actually quite rigid. There are times when it swings, but even then it is a VERY controlled and precise swing. I was able to get it down. But the nuance, phrasing and feeling on the Coltrane record and on ‘Kind of Blue’ is all very subtle with slight give and take all over the place. I could spend some time writing all the notes down to learn them, and I am sure I still couldn’t capture what is happening on those discs (especially since, if I could play EXACTLY what is on those recordings I would be missing out on a huge part of what that musical tradition is!). And I think that is one of the reasons they still keep my attention so strongly. They ARE jazz classics, quite popular and accessible. But there is SO much more once you get beyond that level. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how deep I feel the Brubeck disc is. Some nice songs, and I think the group plays amazingly well together. But I don’t feel an excitement over it any more.

The Art Blakey discs however are just damn amazing. While I wouldn’t expect to hear either of these in a Top 10 (the discs tonight were ‘A Night In Tunisia’ from the Rudy Van Gelder Series and a Jazz Messengers disc with Thelonious Monk) they feature some exhilarating performances. The Monk disc is just lots of fun. Blakey and Monk are basically passing on tradition to some younger sidemen… something that Art Blakey in particular would spend so much of his career doing.

The ‘A Night In Tunisia’ disc features Lee Morgan and a young Wayne Shorter. I once heard a story about Dizzy Gillespie where he was trying to explain how him and Charlie Parker thought about bop music. He said that they just wanted to play faster then any one else could so they couldn’t be imitated. This Art Blakey version, I imagine, would have made Dizzy’s jaw drop. When I got the disc I noticed the title track was over 11 minutes long, and I assumed it was a more relaxed version of the tune. It turned out that it is really a 20 minute version that is played at double speed. It is a roller coaster of a recording and the playing is almost unbelievable. Except there it is… in 1960 you couldn’t fake this kind of playing.

Tags: Art Blakey, Dave Brubeck, Lee Morgan, Paul Desmond, Rudy Van Gelder, Thelonious Monk, Wayne Shorter
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Day 16. More John Coltrane.

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Tonight’s post will need to be quicker, but it is also partly a continuation from last night’s. ‘The Last Giant’ is a 2-CD Coltrane retrospective (another box-set choice, courtesy of Mira) that I bought before I knew much of anything about jazz. ‘Blue Train’ was the first jazz album I ever bought, and I had loaned it out before a road trip from Roseville, CA down to SF. But the title song was stuck in my head and I couldn’t get the disc back in time for the ride. So I bought ‘The Last Giant’ which had ‘Blue Train’ on it, and tons of stuff I had never heard.

So – I was 19 years old, and meeting family in SF for dinner, then I was driving back to Berkeley to spend the weekend with Tamiko at her new apartment on Arch St. just north of UC Berkeley. I finished dinner and hopped into my ’78 Corolla and started trying to find my way to the Bay Bridge. I could see it, but I had never driven to it myself and had to figure out how to get there. I was the end of May, and you could tell the Bay Area summer was around the corner. Fog was rolling in, and it was almost cold enough to roll up my windows. But I wanted to play the music loudly with the windows down while driving across the bridge. ‘Russian Lullaby’ came on… crashing piano chords from Red Garland, then the song takes off with an amazingly tight ride cymbal pushing the whole thing along at a break neck pace. Then the sax starts in on the melody. The notes feel incredibly long compared to the tempo of everything else. Between the drums, the bass, the piano and the tune, everything is locked in rhythm, but it feels like four different tempos. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I repeated it again across the bridge… on to ‘Blue Train’ then ‘Giant Steps’. The smell of the bay and fog came in through the windows, and I was off to see my girlfriend for the weekend. I can still feel that excitement.

Three months later I would move to Berkeley.

Tags: Berkeley, John Coltrane, San Francisco
Posted in Jazz, Tamiko | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Jazz’ Category

Day 42. Leon Parker, Beethoven, Bach and more Beethoven (maybe).

Day 37. Harry Connick Jr., and Paolo Conte.

Day 32. Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery.

Day 31. Berio.

Day 30. Django Reinhardt.

Day 29. Miles Davis, John Coltrane (alone and together).

Day 26. Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington.

Day 21. Miles Davis.

Day 20. Art Blakey, Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Day 16. More John Coltrane.

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