Music Review: "Art Tatum: The Complete Solo Masterpieces"

This article was first published at Blogcritics

In the liner notes to the Original Jazz Classics remastered re-release of The Art Tatum Solo Masterpieces, Vol. 1 from Concord Music Group, Tad Hershorn talks about Tatum’s stature as “the greatest pianist jazz has ever produced.” Now whether you agree with Hershorn’s assertion may turn on your definition of greatness, but however you want to define what it is that makes a jazz pianist great, there is no question that Art Tatum belongs in the conversation.

The collection of performances that make up this album from the Concord Music Group goes a long way to making Hershorn’s point. Define greatness in terms of effortless virtuosity at the keyboard, and Tatum can’t be faulted. Define it as inventive originality, define it as emotional honesty, and the man is nothing short of a giant. “Greatest” may be arguable; there is no question about great.

Whether Hershorn’s narrative of the December 1953 session that began the recording process has its roots in mythology as much as in reality. It is easy to be a tad skeptical. Yet, if it is myth, it is the kind of myth that you want to believe. Tatum, he explains, walks into the studio at 9 o’clock with a portable radio. Producer Norman Granz had provided a case of the pianist’s favorite libation. Tatum sits down at the piano, opens a beer, tunes his radio into the UCLA basketball game, and listens for a half hour or so. Then he takes off, producing 69 masters in two days, most on the first take. If it didn’t quite happen that way, it should have.

The Concord classic includes the nine tracks from the original Pablo album released in 1975, supplemented by seven tracks from The Art Tatum Solo Masterpieces, Vol. 9. Beginning with a short and sweet reading of “Moonglow,” he then takes off on an exciting ride through Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale,” playing his signature games with tempos. He finds new ideas in classics like “Body and Soul,” “Embraceable You,” and “Sophisticated Lady.” He develops the themes of lesser known pieces like “Blue Lou” and “My Last Affair” with a sensitivity that suggests they should have been classics as well.

In some sense it isn’t worthwhile singling out individual tracks as highlights. This is an album of highlights. There are 16 songs and there isn’t a bad one in the bunch. Some may prefer the complex cascading cadences of his “Have You Met Miss Jones,” some, the melodic phrasing of “Stay as Sweet as You Are.” Some may favor the mellow bluesy “Willow Weep for Me,” some, the swinging “It’s Only a Paper Moon.” Most will agree that the better course is simply to prefer Art Tatum no matter what tune he is playing.

Of course, this album barely scratches the surface of Tatum’s solo work. In 1971, Pablo released Art Tatum: The Complete Solo Masterpieces, a seven disk box set. Fans, old and new, then, may have a lot of great music waiting for them.

Music Review: Liz Childs - Take Flight

This article was first published at Blogcritics.

The thing that intrigued me the most about jazz vocalist/pianist Liz Childs' second album Take Flight was that among the seventeen jazz standards and tunes from the great American songbook , the kinds of songs you would normally expect from a jazz singer, she had included two pieces from Leonard Cohen and one from Bob Dylan.  Having just reviewed a CD from Monika Borzym, another promising young jazz vocalist, that featured an unlikely repertoire of music from the likes of Fiona Apple and Amy Winehouse, I was interested in seeing what Childs was doing with this material. 

There is nothing wrong with songs that are tried and true, but there is something important to be gained both for the artist and the genre when they broaden their horizons.  Jazz, after all, is in a real sense about breaking away from the same old same old.  It is about taking a piece of music and making it your own.   Childs takes us on a biting ride through Cohen's iconic "Hallelujah." At times her voice fairly reeks with bitterness and scorn, at least until the very end.   "Famous Blue Raincoat" is  a wistful haunting gem.  Childs invests both lyrics with an emotional truth that is nothing short of mesmerizing.  Bob Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" gets a swinging old style treatment with some nice guitar solo work from Ed MacEachen.  Truth to tell, I wouldn't have minded a few more of these kinds of songs.

Not that there's anything wrong her work on the standards, she has a voice that rings with bell like clarity, that can move from intense passion to playful girlishness with equal appeal.  She takes a lyric and plumbs its depth weaving sweet scat arabesques around its melodies.  Two good examples are the songs which open and close the album.  Jimmy van Heusen's "It Could Happen to You" and "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," the Cole Porter classic, both highlight her scatting talents.  Her vocal play on "fire" and "desire" in the Porter tune is a kick.  There's a nice little obligatory bossa nova in Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Dindi."  There is even a nod to the blues with Bobby Troupe's "Baby All the Time." Among the other standards on the album are Porter's "Just One of Those Things," Lorenz Hart's "Lover," and Toots Thielemans' "Bluesette," each getting a fine reading.

The album takes its title from an original piece by guitarist MacEachen, who also is responsible for arranging ten of the songs on the CD.  "Take Flight" offers some nice opportunities for interaction between the singer's scatting and the composer's guitar. 

Childs is backed by MacEachen, Dan Fabricatore on bass and Anthony Pinciotti on drums.  She, herself, has decided to escape from the piano for this album.  "I wanted," she says, "to experience the freedom to explore singing without being constricted by sitting at the piano, and to be able to more completely respond to the band as a vocalist only.  So, that's what this CD is the start of."  If this is any indication of what she can do standing at the front of the band, one can only hope to hear more from her in the future.

Music Review: Oscar Peterson - Unmistakable

This article was first published at Blogcritics.

However Sony Masterworks and Zenph Sound Innovations managed to do it, and I'll do my best to try to explain it, the release of Unmistakable a collection of what they are calling "re-performances" by deceased jazz piano virtuoso Oscar Peterson has produced some remarkably fine music.  The great Oscar Peterson died in December of 2007 at the age of 82 after a long productive career, so while the album makes use of some of his unreleased recordings made in the '70's and 80's, it is not Peterson who is doing the "re-performing."  What we have here is the result of the application of modern technology to artistic innovation, and if this is any example of what the technology is capable of, there will be a lot more coming.

Those readers only interested in good music played brilliantly and not much concerned with how it was recorded and those who think the whole thing is just too spooky can skip ahead to the next paragraph.  According to the Zenph publicity, the company "uses computer software to transform recorded music back into live performances, replicating what was originally played but with vastly improved sound quality.  They start with video recordings as well as some privately recorded performances.  Then as their website describes it: "We transform musical performance into data and then render it into sound, which can be used in completely new ways. Our proprietary platform expresses musical performance as malleable data. Rendered from this data, audio content is liberated from “frozen” recordings—creating immersive and interactive capabilities comparable to those of high‐resolution computer graphics."  I leave it to you to decipher what that may mean.

What you see if you are in the room with the piano is the various keys moving as if being struck by invisible fingers.  What you hear is some very fine music. The piano is programmed to play the particular piece just as it was played by the original performer. .  Zenph has already used this technology to create re-performances by Rachmaninoff, Glenn Gould and jazz legend Art Tatum.  Of course, exactly how this is accomplished is still Zenph's little proprietary secret Had the technology existed back in the day, we could have re-performances of Mozart, Beethoven or Franz Liszt.

At any rate, while Peterson was still alive back in 2007 representatives of the company met with him to show him how their system worked.  At the time they used the recorded re-performances of Peterson's idol, Art Tatum,  to let him hear what their process sounded like, and "hearing his hero playing live again after all the ensuing years brought Peterson to tears."  It impressed him enough that he spent the afternoon working with the team from the company and listening to some re-performances of his own playing.

After Peterson's death his wife helped with the selection of songs for this album. Of all the material made available to the team, they selected performances from two different concerts:  a mid '70's  concert at the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, NY and a 1980's concert from Munich.  They also used a performance from the CBC TV series Oscar Peterson and Friends.  The actual recording contains 16 re-performances, eight in stereo and the same eight repeated in binaural stereo for earphones.  It is  as beautiful a recording of solo piano jazz as you are likely to hear.

The songs are all classics.  The album begins with "Body and Soul" and a signature speeding romp through "Back Home Again in Indiana."  It ends with the Benny Goodman theme, "Goodbye."  In between there is a Duke Ellington medley that starts with "Take the A Train" and includes "In a Sentimental Mood,"  "C Jam Blues," "Lady of the Lavender Mist" and "Satin Doll" among others.  Gershwin's "The Man I Love," Anthony Newly and Leslie Bricusse's "Who Can I Turn To," Victor Young's "When I Fall in Love," and Dizzy Gillespie's "Con Alma" round out a very strong album.

Music Review: Sir Roland Hanna - "Colors From a Giant's Kit"

This article was first published at http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-sir-roland-hanna-colors/

Back many more years than I would care to remember, I took a college music appreciation course called "Piano Literature of the Romantic Period."  Neither a pianist myself, nor even particularly knowledgeable about music in general, I thought it was time to learn something about the music written for an instrument I had always loved to listen to.  The course turned out to be a comprehensive introduction to some of the most thrilling music ever written—some of it for piano and orchestra, most for solo piano.  There is something about the solo piano in the hands of a skilled artist playing the works of master composers that can paint emotional colors like no other instrument.  Think of Rubenstein playing Chopin, Lang Lang playing Beethoven. 

If this is true for the classical piano, it is no less true for the jazz piano, where the artist is as much a creator as he is a performer.  Sir Roland Hanna is just such an artist.  Let me begin by acknowledging my ignorance.  I had no knowledge of Hanna, until one day an album of his arrived as they say "over the transom," but once I had listened, it was clear I had been missing a truly exceptional talent.   Colors From a Giant's Kit is a collection of fourteen solo tracks recorded by Hanna before his death in 2003.  While Hanna may not have the achieved the same kind of public acclaim as some of the more noted jazz pianists—the Keith Jarretts, the Oscar Petersons, the Monks—a little surfing makes it clear, that he is what is known in the trade as a musician's musician.  The people who know know about Hanna.  He has played with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra and Benny Goodman's band among others.  He has accompanied singers like Sarah Vaughn and Al Hibbler.  He has composed works for the piano and orchestra and has soloed with some of the major classical orchestras in the country.  This was a pianist that deserved a lot more attention.

The album is a diverse mix that shows the range of Hanna's musical interests.  There's nice little traditional blues and a modernist take on the old time rag in his own composition, "20^th Century Rag."  He takes "Cherokee," the swing classic made famous by Charlie Barnet, and first turns it into a romantic ballad before making clear he can swing it as well.  He jams his way through jazz standards like "Robbin's Nest," "In a Mellow Tone," and a richly evocative version of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life."  There is an almost impressionistic take on Coltrane's "Naima." Then there are his own compositions: the album's title song is an upbeat romp.  "Natalie Rosanne" is a sweet ballad.  "A Story Often Told But Seldom Heard" is an eight minute tone poem with echoes of classical modernism.

And in a way this may be the most compelling thing about both Hanna's playing and his composing.  His work reverberates with echoes of the classics from a variety of traditions.  Throughout the album you hear the influences of not only "Piano Literature of the Romantic Period," not only of Liszt and Rachmaninoff, but Satie and Gershwin and probably a bunch of others as well.  He takes these influences and mixes them with Scott Joplin and Duke Ellington and he produces something all his own.  As some of the more experimental voices in modern jazz go, he may be a little tame.  He may be a little too traditional.  But for anyone who finds themselves thrilled with that Romantic piano music, Sir Roland Hanna (the Sir by the by according to Wikipedia is an honorary title bestowed on him by the president of Liberia) is someone you will want to get acquainted with and Colors From a Giant's Kit is a good place to start.