NEW NAIM RELEASE: CHARLIE HADEN'S PRIVATE COLLECTION

I have the two original releases and they are both excellent. Highly recommended.

Nigel

Any chance these will become available on vinyl?

Yes! We plan to release The Private Collection on 3LP triple gatefold 180gsm virgin vinyl in early 2008. We recently remastered the record at Abbey Road, and it is sounding great!

BBC Online Review!!!

Click HERE to see the review on the BBC website.

by Kathryn Shackleton
23 November 2007

As a 70th birthday present for US bassist Charlie Haden, Naim have dipped into their archives to release The Private Collection, a double album of live gigs recorded when he was 50. Originally released as 2 separate CDs, both feature personnel from Haden's Quartet West, the back-to-bebop band that he formed in the '80s. One CD was recorded at Charlie's 50th birthday gig in Santa Monica, and the other just a few months later in his home state of Missouri. At both he's playing for friends and family.

Haden's well known for his work with free-jazz pioneer, Ornette Coleman, which he acknowledges in his Missouri set, in a 22 minute rendition of Coleman's ''Lonely Woman'. Between Ernie Watts' violent sax squawks and Alan Broadbent's speeded-up piano, Haden inserts a simple down-home melody. It's not just a quote, it's the whole tune – like something from his family's country radio days - and its sheer simplicity contrasted against the dissonance around it makes it the weirdest thing he could have played.

''Lonely Woman'' isn’t typical of The Private Collection, though. Featuring three Charlie Parker tracks and three by Pat Metheny the rest is melodic, straight-ahead and mostly bebop-orientated. Ernie Watts shines in his role as frontman, the rich tone of his sax having a dynamic, rocky edge to it.

Haden's own ''Bay City'' is a beautiful melody, swinging and bluesy, and executed with style by Watts, Broadbent and Paul Motian on drums. The extended, meandering bass solo in the middle doesn't do justice to the piece, though; but in ''Silence'', also by Haden, Charlie redeems himself. Here, he makes his bass solo the crux of the music - a plaintive voice receding to a whisper, then humming with Broadbent's meditative piano and tolling behind Ernie Watt's soaring sax.

There's palpable enjoyment in each Charlie Parker piece. In ''Lisa'' and ''Passport'', Watts's sax flies on the bebop lines, as all the musicians embrace the fast swing. Bach's ''Etudes'', which ends the Santa Monica CD, stands in contrast to the ornate Parker pieces - being surprisingly moving, almost unadorned baroque. Strangely, ''Farmer's Trust'' by Pat Metheny appears on both of the CDs; one version more upbeat, featuring complex overlapping rhythmic patterns on Billy Higgins' drums, and the other more thoughtful and restrained.

Although it marks Charlie Haden's 70th year, The Private Collection is not a career retrospective. It's more a snapshot from the family album. There's the musical equivalent of a regrettable hairstyle here and there, but it doesn't detract from the enjoyment of a formative moment in time.

Thanks Simon, looking forward to that release very much.

Northern Echo Review!!!

By Peter Bevan
22nd November 2007

This double CD celebrates the bass player’s 70th birthday with two live sets by his Quartet West. Disc 1 actually comes from his 50th birthday concert in Santa Monica with Ernie Watts, Alan Broadbent and Billy Higgin, and disc 2was recorded a year later in St Louis with Paul Motian replacing Higgins. All the players are in top form with Alan Broadbent outstanding on piano, on a programming ranging from Charlie Parker to Ornette Coleman.

Vortex Jazz Review!!!


Visit Vortex Jazz HERE

Featuring two live recordings, the first from an invite-only gig celebrating Charlie Haden's 50th birthday in 1987, the second (a year later) taped at a homecoming concert in St Louis, Missouri, The Private Collection is intimate and winningly informal, yet poised and elegant.
The two bands are basically Quartet West (tenor player Ernie Watts, pianist Alan Broadbent) with two guest drummers, Haden's old collaborators Billy Higgins and (in St Louis) Paul Motian, and the material (Pat Metheny's 'Hermitage' and 'Farmer's Trust', Charlie Parker's 'Passport', 'Segment' and 'Lisa', Haden's own 'Silence' and 'Bay City', Ornette Coleman's 'Lonely Woman', Miles Davis's 'Nardis' and Tony Scott's 'Misery', plus 'Body and Soul' and some Bach 'Etudes') will be familiar to anyone who's seen the band live at their recent London concert, indeed, they played many of the above pieces.
Haden's bass playing is characteristically melodic (betraying his roots as a family-band country singer), his solos little gems of sly conciseness, his tone rich, singing and full, but it is Ernie Watts, particularly on ballad material, who really catches the ear, his rapturous, warbling, earnest sound containing just enough grit to give it emotional purchase.
Broadbent is, as ever, the consummate professional, his contribution to a 22-minute 'Lonely Woman' especially intriguing; the two drummers, Higgins the more overtly springy and vigorous, Motian characteristically adept at propelling the band through its quieter moments, provide absorbing contrasts overall, these are polished, intensely listenable albums from one of the most musicianly bands currently working. Warmly recommended.

The Guardian Review!!!

Charlie Haden, The Private Collection

****

By John Fordham
Friday December 7, 2007

These two CDs, originally released separately, have been reissued together to commemorate the American bassist/composer Haden's 70th year - also the occasion for Verve's Best of Quartet West compilation, reviewed last month. The Verve disc picked from all Haden's moody, film noir-inflected Quartet West albums. The feel here is both more intimate and heatedly spontaneous, and likely to exert a particularly strong pull for audiences at the quartet's acclaimed opening show at the recent London jazz festival. Half the music is from a recorded private birthday gig for Haden in 1987, with a spookily yearning-sounding Ernie Watts on sax and a cymbal-tingling Billy Higgins on drums (recorded very upfront) on an unusual Quartet West repertoire that includes two full-on Charlie Parker fast boppers, a twisting account of Miles Davis' Nardis, and a lovely version of Pat Metheny's Farmer's Trust. The second CD, from a 1988 public concert, reflects Quartet West's more familiar restraint, reprising Farmer's Trust more delicately (but with less mystery), smouldering on a 20-minute version of Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman, and featuring Haden at his majestically deliberate best on long bass explorations in Silence, and Body and Soul.

Jazz Rag Review!!!

Charlie Haden
The Private Collection
NaimCD108

By Julian Maynard-Smith

The first of these live discs is Charlie Haden’s 50th birthday concert, recorded at At My Place (a Santa Monica jazz club) on 6 August 1987; the second was a recorded on 4 April 1988 at Webster University. These recordings weren’t originally released until 1994, and even then they were limited editions, distributed through Naim Hi-Fi retailers. Their release to a wider market, in a double digipack, is to celebrate Haden’s 70th birthday. The recording quality of Disc 1 is rather raw compared to Disc 2, but since the engineer was the same for both, this may be due to the less favourable acoustics of what sounds like a smaller venue.

Disc 1 features the line-up that had recorded Charlie Haden Quartet West the previous December: Ernie Watts on sax, Alan Broadbent on piano and Billy Higgins on drums, although Paul Motian takes over drums on Disc 2.Tracks from the Quartet West album appear in these live sets; Body & Soul, Pat Metheny’s Hermitage, Charlie Parker’s Passport and Charlie Haden’s Bay City. Other tracks range from Tony Scott (Misery) to JS Back (Etudes)

Most performances are lengthy, with Passport over 15 minutes, and Ornette Coleman Lonely Woman weighing in at nearly 23 minutes – although Watts’s urgent tenor is more late Trane than early Ornette. Not that it’s all fire and brimstone; Body & Soul and the two versions of Farmer’s Trust in particular are more intimate, quiet performances. Haden’s extended solos will be a treat for bassists, and are a reminder of what a melodic soloist he is.

The Sunday Times Review!!!

Visit The Sunday Times HERE

By Clive Davis
Sunday 16th December

If you missed his concert at last month’s London Jazz Festival, here’s a chance to catch up. The double-bassist Charlie Haden, unbelievably, turned 70 this year. Disc one finds him blowing out the candles on his 50th, in an elegant set in Santa Monica, leading the original Quartet West – worth hearing for Pat Metheny’s Hermitage. Side two sees Paul Motian take over from Billy Higgins on drums, in a gig recorded the following year. It’s another stimulating mix, including Haden’s moody Bay City. A newcomer to one of the most polished groups around? Treat yourself to their Verve compilation, The Best of Quartet West.

Hi-Fi Critic Magazine Review!!!

Charlie Haden
The Private Collection
Naim Audio NAIMCD108

By Nigel Finn

I spent a long time not listening to jazz (my loss), and Charlie Haden’s bass playing was one of the reasons I started. I first heard the music on the first of this two CD set around sixteen years ago, played via a cassette through a Sony Pro-Walkman connected to a large Naim system. It sounded astonishing and was probably the first time I sat and listened properly to a jazz recording. The music on disc one was recorded by Ken Christianson at Charlie Haden’s fiftieth birthday party, and there’s a real sparkle to the playing. I now own numerous Charlie Haden recordings, and in all of them there’s a feeling that other musicians really like playing with him. Track two, Passport, features a bass and drum solo, and the respect and space the two musicians give each other is wonderful. Alan Broadbent’s piano is both melodic and dynamically adventurous, but the night belongs to Charlie; the rhythmically and melodically inventive bass solo on Nardis well deserves its applause.
Disc two was recorded about a year later, and features the same musicians apart from Paul Motian replacing Billy Higgins on drums. Switching discs is fascinating and shows exactly how much the space in which the music is played influences the sound. The birthday party is up close and intimate; the second disc is recorded at Webster University St Louis is an altogether bigger, more reverberant affair that lifts, separates and brightens all the instruments. For all sorts of reasons I wanted to like the birthday party disc more, but the St Louis concert not only sounds amazing, the playing is electric. The 22 minute cover of Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman is thrilling from start to finish, and throwing a bass version of the classic John Henry into the middle is as inspired as it is silly. This is a good album for people whop think they don’t like jazz, and an excellent one for the rest of us.

Love these CD's....

Review to follow in TONEAudio issue 14
(Feb 10 release)

Good to know these are available soon in LP format...

Thanks! I'll make sure we get the review up here!

gadgetspeak.com Review!!!

See the review at Gadgetspeak HERE

Charlie Haden The Private Collection
By Paul Smart

It's that time when I get to tell you about my passion - don't get excited it's not 'X' certificate - it's Jazz mainly that produced from around 1950 onwards. Naim are a company best known for their excellent audio equipment (it’s expensive though) but they also have both a classical and jazz label.

A superb bass player from the USA is Charlie Haden and he is just 70 years young. This is a two CD offering the first was recorded on his 50th birthday 20 years ago. It was one of the first entries in the Naim catalogue and has been unavailable for many years as it was originally only released as a limited edition that soon sold out. Now as 2008 comes in it is re-released along with another he recorded the following year at a university. In the 1950's it was the thing to record at university's. Nowadays I suspect the majority of the audience are of an age to have been at university at around that time.

Charlie recently played a single concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London with a very similar quartet, my regret is that I failed to get a ticket for this sellout concert.
CD1 the Birthday Concert from the 6th August 1958 has seven tracks and a total of 71 minutes of exquisite quartet jazz. Charlie Haden on bass, Ernie Watts on Saxophones, Alan Broadbent on Piano and Billy Higgins on Drums.
Perhaps the best known track is Nardis by Miles Davis which is still in lots of peoples repertoires today. There are only two composer with two tracks is Pat Metheny whose music is still also popular today. The other maestro is the great Charlie Parker who was a very proficient writer as well as a superb saxophone player. The other two composers are Tony Scott - also a great musician - and finally Etudes that will be well known to anyone into classical music as it was penned by J.S. Bach.

The second CD - remember this was recorded less than a year later - shows a total change in the performance repertoire this time six tracks although the notes claim seven tracks this time with 75 minutes of music, the only change in the lineup is Paul Motian on drums.
The longest track is one that I know best recorded by the Modern Jazz Quartet who were already big in that time, Lonely Woman although it was penned by Ornette Coleman. This comes in at near to 23 minutes a figure that would fill a side of an LP. Without doubt the most famous tune on either CD is Body & Soul which almost every modern jazz group will still play in their repertoire today.
I find it interesting that Charlie Haden himself pens two offerings Bay City and Silence. The other composers are Charlie Parker and Pat Metheny.
If you are into modern jazz you must have an example of Charlie Haden's work in your collection and this double CD has 13 excellent tracks with most at around the ten minute mark giving all the quartet members a chance to shine. Ernie Watts is a much underrated saxophone player and Alan Broadbent is a marvelous pianist.

This is outstanding value for two CD's at the price of £16.99. Normally I tend to review two CD's at the same time here in one of my few jazz slots a year I cover just this one album, I will not rate it as Jazz is my passion and I would want to rate it too highly. If you like Jazz then you should have this in your collection.

I like Charlie Haden's work. Anyone who can get Ornette Coleman to sound melodic is OK by me.


D

Indeed - Ornette Coleman couldn't!

Charlie Haden gig from this year's LJF is on R3 at 11.30 tonight. Fire up those NATs!

The Private Collection received a great review in this months edition of Jazzwise magazine, with the journalist Stuart Nicholson, even recommending Private Collection over the recent Verve Universal's QW Best of Album!

Charlie Haden
The Best of Quartet West (Verve 530 210-7)
***
The Private Collection (NAIMCD108)
****

Formed in 1985, Charlie Haden’s Quartet West made six studio albums for Universal plus two live albums that Naim are now making available to the general public for the first time. Originally released as promos exclusively for Naim customers, The Private Collection, comprising Haden’s 50th birthday concert in 1987 and a concert at Webster University, St Louis from the following year, were too good to keep under wraps. Aside from Haden’s own exemplary accompaniment, the stars if Quartet West are the hugely underrated Alan Broadbent and Ernie Watts, veterans of the Woody Herman Herd and Buddy Rich Band respectively. Both have an architectonic approach to improvising – from small beginnings they seem capable of building gleaming edifices (Passport, Bay City and Nardis on Private Collection) that give this group a contemporary feel in these live performances that was consciously avoided in the studio where, as the writer Francis Davis has pointed out: ‘It’s as though Haden were imagining [Charlie] Parker and [Phillip] Marlowe prowling the Hollywood streets with him’. However, it must be said Haden does retro well, whether it be the emergence of Quartet West out of Jo Stafford’s 1944 recording of ‘Alone Together’ or utilising Broadbent’s arranging skills for orchestra on ‘Here’s Looking At You’, with both evoking film noir images of Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep or Dick Powell in Murder My Sweet. Another smart retro job is accomplished on ‘Ou es-tu, mon amour?’ Here Stephane Grappelli is whistled up, courtesy of his 1994 recording of the song ofr Universal, as well as Django Reinhardt and Grappelli’s version of the song from 1949. Less endearing are versions of ‘Body and Soul’ and ‘Moonlight Serenade’ which have been pretty much done to death, but overall the Universal compilation captures the spirit of the quartet’s excellent work for the label.

Stuart Nicholson

Downbeat Review!!!
April 2008

Charlie Haden
The Private Collection
NAIM108

By Robert Doerschuk

****

This double-CD offers two previously unreleased concerts by Charlie Haden, each one bearing some personal significance. The first was recorded in Santa Monica, Calif on Aug. 9 1987 – the bassist’s 50th birthday. The second, dating from April 4, 1988, took place at Webster University in St. Louis, not far from Springfield, MO., the town where Haden grew up, as he writes in his notes from this disc “singing country music on the radio”.
There’s only one country lick on these discs, in a playful extended bass interlude in the midst of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman”. From start to finish, though, Haden and his quartet offer sweet and satisfying performances, none of them venturing too far outside and all of it played with the breezy, understated swing of veterans for whom playing with polish and expression has long become second nature. The participants are easy to recognize –Ernie Watts in particular, with his big, old school sound. The authority of his delivery, more than the profundity of his conceptions, plays well with the crowd.
It’s instructive to compare Watt’s fleet but derivative choruses on “Nardis” and Charlie Parker’s “Passport” with Haden thoughtful, spacious, rhythmically subtle and inventive improvisation, played unaccompanied or over Billy Higgins’ simmering, more-felt-than-heard backup. His introduction to “Bay City”, which opens Disc 2, is briefer but just as beautiful. His artistry is clearest in the first chorus of “Body & Soul”, which conveys these qualities as well as a sense of effort and concentration.
Moments like these recur throughout The Private Collection, capturing Haden as a patient player, with a temperament unlike those of assist who bend in claiming their equal rights as virtuoso soloists. Some differences can be discerned between these two sets, the most apparent being the presence of Paul Motian on drums. He plays a little more freely than Higgins; when he takes an unexpected turn by dropping bombs during his “Bay City” solo, he creates more of an impression of inconsistency than his colleagues.

All About Jazz.com Review!!!

Here: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=29594

The Private Collection
Charlie Haden | NAIM (2008)
By John Kelman

Originally released as limited edition single discs sets, bass icon Charlie Haden and specialty audiophile label Naim Audio finally give The Private Collection broader release. Two CDs documenting two concerts with his then nascent Quartet West from 1987 and 1988, it's also a dovetail to The Best of Quartet West (Verve, 2007), prefacing Haden's 2008 summer tour with founding members Alan Broadbent (piano), Ernie Watts (saxophones) and newcomer Rodney Green (drums).
The 1987 show was in celebration of Haden's fiftieth birthday, and features the original Quartet West line-up with the late Billy Higgins on drums. Paul Motian is in the drum seat for the 1988 performance, prior to Larence Marable joining the band and remaining until it's sixth and (so far) final studio disc, The Art of the Song (Verve, 1999). Initially conceived as a West Coast, film noir homage, Quartet West's origins were as more of a playing band, in contrast with later projects, where Haden would paste archival recordings, Zeilig-like, from artists including Coleman Hawkins, Chet Baker and Duke Ellington.
With a handful of tracks from its first two releases, the group takes liberties with tunes like Pat Metheny's “Hermitage”—originally a lyrical tune from the guitarist's folkloric New Chautauqua (ECM, 1979)—that recall just how exciting the group was in its early years, before a stronger nostalgic penchant set in. Firmly planted in the mainstream, Charlie Parker's “Passport” is still a thrilling fifteen minute ride, with fiery solos from everyone, most notably Higgins, whose brushwork remains an unparalleled thing of beauty to this day.
Motian's set makes clear, on Charlie Parker's “Lisa,” that despite a lifelong predilection for color he's just as capable of swinging hard. But it's the 23-minute version of Ornette Coleman's “Lonely Woman” that's a high point on two-and-a-half hours of music where the bar is set extremely high from the outset. More open-ended than anything the group has performed before or since, its unbridled bursts of energy prove Broadbent and Watts—two players largely associated with the mainstream—to be more widely versed than their discographies suggest. Haden's solo returns to the country roots of his younger days, but feels completely natural in the context of Quartet West's no-boundaries approach to this Coleman classic.
Two versions of Metheny's poignantly balladic “Farmer's Trust” shed light, not only on how each performance is different for Quartet West, but on the difference two drummers can make. With Higgins it's taken at a brighter tempo, swinging in ways that Metheny's original on Travels (ECM, 1983) never did. With Motian the tempo is slower, the drummer providing a more texturally driven, implicit pulse. Still, as the tune intensifies during Watts' fluid solo, Motian doesn't steer clear of explicit pulse, making it the more dramatic and, ultimately, satisfying take.
Surpassing its Best of collection, The Private Collection finds Haden and Quartet West at its true best, with material spanning four decades but sounding as if it had been written yesterday.