JAZZ
Miles Davis live; the Anglo-US Impossible Gentlemen; an extraordinary
Smithsonian jazz collection; plus minimalism from Pascal Schumacher
JAZZ CHOICE
Wight hot
Barry Witherden enjoys the release
of Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew Live
counter cultural:
MILES DAVIS
Bitches Brew Live
Miles Davis (tp), Gary Bartz (sax),
Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett (keyboards),
Dave Holland (bass), Jack Dejohnette
(drums), Airto Moreira (perc) etc
Columbia 88697 81485 2 59:41 mins
£8.99
This disc contains three previouslyunissued tracks from Newport
1969 and the complete performance
from the 1970 Isle of Wight (IoW)
Festival. Wayne Shorter, stuck in
traffic, missed the Newport gig, so
this is a rare quartet session. The
IoW concert features a smaller, less
messy band than the one on the
studio version of Bitches Brew.
Let’s get straight to the heresy:
at this time Davis seemed driven
by non-musical considerations.
He claimed he took the directions
heard here to re-connect jazz with
its funky dance roots, but some
evidence suggests he was alarmed
by jazz’s eclipse by rock. Broadcaster
Peter Clayton said around this
period that Davis sounded like
he was treading his way through
toys on a nursery floor. That sums
up Corea, Jarrett and Moreira’s
contributions. But Holland, Bartz
and DeJohnette are on fine form.
Miles is Miles, spitting out whitehot phrases, whipping the music
forward, imperious and insouciant.
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
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Hear an excerpt of this recording at www.bbcmusicmagazine.com
96
Gwilym Simcock (piano), Mike Walker
(guitar), Steve Swallow (bass),
Adam Nussbaum (drums)
Basho SRCD 36-2 63:29 mins
BBC Music Direct
Miles Davis at the Isle
of Wight Festival, 1970
BBC Music Direct
THE IMPOSSIBLE
GENTLEMEN
BBC M USIC M AG A Z I N E
£12.99
Packing more into eight tracks than
many could manage in that number
of albums, this seemingly improbable
Anglo-American group (which in
general can work well, as Big Air fans
will tell you) doesn’t so much raise
the bar as remind us where the bar
should have been in the first place.
The quartet’s UK tour this June will
be persuading its audiences to buy
this release already, so allow me to
commend this CD to everyone else;
it’s simply outstanding, offering a
set of modern originals, mostly by
Walker and Simcock. These back up
all the usual box ticking – virtuosity,
imagination, originality etc – with
the realisation that what’s needed is
a high degree of constantly refreshed
musical content rather than the overworrying of too few ideas. In sonic
terms I’d have let a bit more air into
the mix during the busier passages,
but the album’s no less outstanding
for that. Roger Thomas
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
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JAZZ: THE
SMITHSONIAN
ANTHOLOGY
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count
Basie, Charlie Parker etc
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
SFW CD 40820 458:21 mins (6 discs)
BBC Music Direct
£99.99
As Rousseau might have said, jazz
was born free but is everywhere in
institutions. Roughly a century after
surfacing in funky New Orleans
dance halls, this pungently personal
music has been comprehensively
analyzed and codified, embraced
by conservatoires.
The mixed blessing of respectability
is palpable in Jazz: The Smithsonian
Anthology. Over six CDs, 111 tracks
and 200 pages of earnest annotation,
Washington’s august establishment
aims to summarise the music’s
evolution, from ragtime to the
21st century. Selected by a committee
of 47 scholars, such titans as Louis
Armstrong and Miles Davis make
multiple appearances; stylistic
developments are marked by
standard masterpieces and the
occasional curiosity.
Unquestionably, the music is
sublime, but the whole enterprise has
an academic flavour, like a sampler
snipped out of an amazing tapestry.
Intended as ‘a jazz appreciation
course in a box’, its real value is the
music’s rampant, enduring ‘sound
of surprise’. Geoffrey Smith
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
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PASCAL SCHUMACHER
QUARTET
Bang My Can
Pascal Schumacher (vibes),
Franz von Chossy (pno), Christoph
Devisscher (bass), Jens Düppe (drums).
Enja ENJ-95722 52:01mins
BBC Music Direct
£12.99
The title of Luxembourg-born vibist
Pascal Schumacher’s second album is
a nod to the influence on him of New
York’s Bang On A Can All-Stars, the
part-minimalist, part-chamber music
group. Like BOAC, Schumacher
creates a charged atmosphere by
using repeated motifs imprinted on
a percussive background.
Being a tuned percussion
instrument the vibraphone is ideal
for the job and Schumacher bends
it to his will, producing soft glow
harmonies, shimmering rhythms and
iridescent solo runs. The ensemble
playing, delicate and yet so assured,
is mesmerising and gives a crystal
clarity to complex arrangements.
Writing credits are shared around
the band, and while the individual
melodies might not always gain
purchase, the music’s fizz lingers in
the mind long after the programme
has finished. Garry Booth
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
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All discs can be ordered from www.classical-music.com/shop
JAZZ REVIEWS
JAZZ STARTER COLLECTION
for the joy of it:
Stan Getz, a lifelong
master of his sax
No. 129 Stan Getz (II)
getty
Geoffrey Smith, presenter of Jazz Record Requests, on
the later career of the room-stealing tenor saxist
Wynton Marsalis’s
saxophonist
brother Branford
recalls sharing a
concert with Stan
Getz at London’s
Royal Festival Hall. Though the
tenor king was one of his heroes,
he was indignant when Getz
casually observed the gig might
teach him something. Defiantly,
Branford poured out torrents of
notes – which, he gradually
realised, only sounded ‘muddled
and awful’ in the echoing hall.
Getz, by contrast, ‘played the
room’, stealing the show with
beautiful, measured lyricism.
When they met afterwards, the old
master asked, ‘Well, did you learn
something?’. And Branford replied,
‘Yes I did, Mr Getz. Thank you.’ That
story illustrates a couple of key
aspects of the Getz character –
first, the off-hand egotism
Branford called ‘brash’, which
could also escalate into wilful
malice, exacerbated by lifelong
addictions to alcohol and drugs.
And above all, complete devotion
to the craft of playing jazz
saxophone. As Getz once said, ‘I
never thought of it as an art. It was
just work that I loved.’ Listeners
who’ve availed themselves of the
first Getz Jazz Starter (No. 46,
February 2005), know very well
how impressive a life’s work it
comprised, from teenage touring
with big bands and winning fame
through his melting solo on Woody
Herman’s ‘Early Autumn’, to
stardom on the jazz circuit to
mega-popular success as the airy,
iconic sound of the bossa nova,
And it continued virtually up to
the tenorist’s death. In March,
1991, though suffering from cancer,
Getz recorded a live duo concert at
Copenhagen’s Cafe Montmartre
with pianist Kenny Barron, whom
he called ‘my musical other half’,
his peer in warmth and virtuosity.
Despite having to rest between
tunes, the saxophonist is in
ebullient form on such uptempo
tracks as ‘East of the Sun’, while
ballads like ‘I Remember Clifford’,
radiate his unique poignancy.
Three months after these duets,
released on the 2-disc People Time,
Stan Getz died, 20 years ago this
June. Full of life to the end, the
set makes a perfect swansong
for a jazz master who said he
‘would play just for the sheer
joy of improvising music’.
CD CHOICE
People Time
Stan Getz-Kenny
Barron
Emarcy 510 1342
£16.99
To order CDs call BBC Music Direct 01634 832 789; prices include P&P