The Road not Taken
Posted by: mikeeschman on 30 June 2009
Last night, my wife and I listened to Stan Getz' "Focus". It is a series of impressions performed by a small string ensemble, a drummer and Stan Getz on tenor saxophone, recorded in a somewhat harsh "gee whiz, it's stereo!" popular in the 50s and early 60s.
The strings do the things you expect strings to do at a symphony's pop concerts, with the drummer playing a free jazz line over Getz' improvisation.
It has an intimate delicacy, a buoyancy that is quite beautiful; and Getz' fluid sense of line
ties things together in a way that suggests this entire album is a seamless composition.
We've all forgotten this way of making music. It was refreshing to hear it again.
How about you? Any forgotten or neglected inroads into jazz you'd like to bring into the sunlight?
Posted on: 30 June 2009 by nicnaim
Mike,
"Focus" is a great album and to my mind works much better with the classical accompaniment than for instance the Getz / Boland outing with Kenny Clarke - Francy Bolland Big Band on "Changes of Scenes".
Depending on who you read, "Focus" was commissioned by Getz, and was written by Eddie Sauter, but with Getz improvising between the gaps of the original parts written for him as he did not like them. Either way it is a great collaboration, and should be any music fan's collection IMHO.
In answer to your question, I am not sure there is anything I am aware of that is quite like "Focus", but I do have a real soft spot for "Guitar Forms" by Kenny Burrell, which is unlike any of his other albums.
As the sleeve notes say: "The various selections in this album can be, if one choses, classified as: traditional blues, flamenco, modern blues, classical, bossa nova, Spanish and Latin ballad, and modern jazz. This listing follows the order of the performance".
The album was arranged and conducted by Gil Evans. Burrell is said to have "thrown off the shackles of the "purist"" and goes on to say: "There are only three kinds of music to me: good, bad and indifferent", and I think that is a pretty good philosophy.
While "Guitar Forms" might not meet strictly meet your criteria, it is well worth shedding a little sunlight on. You forget about the mix of styles very quickly and concentrate on the music. This probably also accounts for the rather weird mix of music I own.
Regards
Nic
Posted on: 01 July 2009 by mikeeschman
I'm going to order "Guitar Forms" by Kenny Burrell, and I have another log to throw on this fire.
Described by one reviewer as "like drinking fifty cups of coffee, then being punched in the face repeatedly", the paranoid fantasy of Stan Kenton's "City of Glass" must be heard for many of the same reasons that Lovecraft and Poe must be read.
An atonal marathon for big band with strings, "City of Glass" is notable for Manyard Fergeson's magnificent playing on "The Trumpet", and even more so for "Everything Happens to Me", where Julie Christie gives what is probably the best female vocal with big band reading ever, a difficult and beautiful chart like no other :-) (Still love Queen Laitifa, but in my world there are multiple "bests").
