What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. XIII)
Posted by: Richard Dane on 01 January 2017
2017 has arrived today, so time to start this thread afresh.
Last year's thread can be found here;
Before a nice album of a newcomer, in typical ECM style..
Now switching to something utterly swinging..
The Barr Brothers - "Sleeping Operator" (2014) my Xmas gift to myself is playing some of my favorites from the past four years. This one was unexpected, I first saw them on CBS Morning Saturday Sessions. Here is a recent set:
MDS posted:nigelb posted:Michael Buble - Christmas
OK, I guess I have trashed any forum cred I might have built up. Don't care, had a couple of Armagnacs and am enjoying this.
Rod Stewart's Christmas offering next.
I trust that Noddy H is on your list too, Nigel. A timeless Xmas song is that.
Of course, the Christmas classic has had a couple of outings already so I have dutifully contributed to Sir Noddy's pension coffers.
Keith Jarrett trio - Live at Montreux
Again a very good CD of the Keith Jarrett, this one is of a live concert they did in 2001 in Montreux. With a very good version of 'Honeysuckle rose'.
A good, in some places great Messiah - let down, for me, by Tim Mead's relatively weak alto.
Cheers
EJ
Beck - "Morning Phase" (2014)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Weihnachtsoratorium (Christmas Oratorio) BWV 248
Gundula Janowitz, Soprano
Christa Ludwig, Alto
Fritz Wunderlich, Tenor
Franz Crass, Bass
Münchener Bach-Orchester | Karl Richter, Conductor | Münchener Bach-Chor, Recording date: March 1965, Herkulessaal, Munich, Germany
Random selection of Weihnachtsoratorium. Other random picks earlier this week and to follow. Merry Christmas.
The War On Drugs - "Lost In The Dream" (2014)
nigelb posted:MDS posted:...
I trust that Noddy H is on your list too, Nigel. A timeless Xmas song is that.
Of course, the Christmas classic has had a couple of outings already so I have dutifully contributed to Sir Noddy's pension coffers.
If Noddy H is on the list surely the Wizzard deserve their annual spin too
As it was showing up a couple of times in the last days...
Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded February 13, 1995 at Teatro alla Scala, Milano
Remixed at Rainbow Studio by Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
February 13, 1995 marks an historic event. It was the first time that Milan’s Teatro alla Scala allowed a jazz musician to headline. Yet Keith Jarrett is, of course, more than his moniker and brings a wealth of music that is no less operatic that what normally graces its stage. For in the same way that opera embodies a flowering intersection of text, acting, and sound, Jarrett unapologetically translates vibration, feeling, and commitment through the lens of the body until their collective prism opens like an eagle’s tail. So begins another of his improvised piano concerts, which in this case augurs a twitch in the skin of space-time until it bleeds.
The melodious unfolding of Part I is a self-fulfilling wish. I cannot help but read shades of childhood into its 45-minute sweep that materializes before our ears. I feel it in the parental awe of the more delicate moments; in the expulsion of air that, with the flick of a pedal, comes tumbling forth with sepia; in the self-referential diamonds sparkling within: shades of Köln, of Gurdjieff (though here he seems to be doing more “writing” than “reading”), of monuments yet to be discovered. Jarrett keeps his hands close together at first, as if to embrace the intimacy taking shape between them, caging a bird whose flight is still a dream. His fingers move in gradations in much the same way that sunlight changes its constitution according to the passage of clouds. As the density grows into a veritable corn maze, Jarrett wraps his mind around a solution and strains that path through the voice. He mixes his breath into those of everyone in attendance, rotating on an axis of love. The feeling of pasture is profound. Like sand between the toes, it is rare and welcome. Finger rolls paint window boxes with the lingering light of day, planting a summer’s worth of flowers in a single cluster. When they wilt, they are but one stem. Caught in the pondering flame that borrows them from sight and reworks their scent into something audible, their continuity is a magic unto itself, a sutra without words. Part I ends in stasis, flipping by gentle degrees the plane of its existence until a full and impenetrable sphere is left behind, which, while translucent, steels itself against the vagaries of interpretation, spinning until it can sing again.
Part II holds a microscope to an eddy of schisms. Brief touches from pedal and tight flowering runs culminate in a fast-forward ball bounce. The music accelerates, is compressed. Meticulously detailed explorations of the piano’s upper register unchain a host of fresh impressions. Particle by particle Jarrett builds a raincloud and flicks its contents in fingerfuls of inspiration. Ever so gradually, his left hand bespeaks a deeper gravity, tumbling over rocks and smoothing into the glassine surface of a faraway lake. There something of life lingers and the kiss of death feels as far away as the horizon. This melts into one of Jarrett’s deepest tunnels of light. He soars in a Gershwinian mode, coating the land with stardust before playing us out to stealthy footsteps, the wake of an unbridled tide.
Jarrett paints worlds of transitions, if not transitions of worlds. Each moment is the fragment of a larger meteorite, whose face can only be heard yet never seen, whose tears can be tasted but never shed. This makes his decision to conclude with a rendition of “Over the Rainbow” far beyond touching. And a rendition is what it truly is, for it must be worked through the body like breath itself until it expands. It is all the more heartwarming for the storm of bravos that drenches its fields before they’ve even had a chance to dry.
La Scala stands out in the Jarrett archive for becoming more absent as its intensity builds. He flushes out unspoken rhythms with stomping feet, painting not external vistas but intimate anatomical diagrams, so that when the chording becomes denser and the music more fully resolved, it feels like dissolution. The relationship between sound and effect, then, is not causal. Just because these styles inhabit the same music doesn’t mean they inhabit the same body. It’s more that Jarrett allows himself to be attuned to their shuffling, inscribing things in real time as if they were self-evident
The brilliance of these solo events manifests not only through the sheer volume of material that flows through him, seemingly translated from some ethereal source, but also through the potency of his melody-making, which at his touch produces a songbook that is timeless and can only be accessed from a place of wonder.
To switch after enjoying it to the last trio album, ...
It's been four years since a recorded peep has been heard from pianist Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio, despite continuing to perform a few select dates each year. But even its last few ECM releases—2009's Yesterdays, 2007's My Foolish Heart and 2004's The Out-of-Towners—were all culled from a clearly fruitful 2001, making it well over a decade since a new recorded note has been heard from Jarrett's longest-lasting group. Fine albums all, the dearth of anything since that time has nevertheless begged the question, even amongst some of his most ardent fans, as to whether this undeniably fine trio had anything new to say.
From Jarrett's a cappella opening to Somewhere's wonderfully coalescing take of trumpeter Miles Davis' "Solar," all doubts are laid to rest as the pianist delivers a performance to rival his classic introduction to "My Funny Valentine" on Still Live (ECM, 1988), one of the Standards Trio's strongest records. It's a terrific start to an album that, recorded in Switzerland during the summer of 2009, celebrates 30 years since Jarrett, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette first entered New York's Power Station studio for the fruitful sessions that yielded three recordings collected on Setting Standards: New York Sessions (ECM, 2008): Standards, Vol. 1 (1983), Changes (1984) and Standards, Vol. 2 (1985).
It's been a long time since the trio has stepped into a studio, and the easiest explanation is that this really is a group best heard live—a point driven home by this 65-minute, six-song set. In addition to Davis, the trio works its way through a list of equally classic songwriters. A particularly lovely take of Frank Perkins and Mitchell Parish's "Stars Fell on Alabama," finds Peacock, combining pure taste and tone, remaining at the top of his game. A quirky rendition of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" is largely constructed around this trio's remarkable ability to suggest swing without actually playing it—the entire structure ready to collapse at any moment like a house of cards—but never actually doing so—even as DeJohnette takes his only real solo of the set, while Jimmy van Heusen and Johnny Mercer's balladic "I Thought About You" closes the set on an irrepressibly romantic note predicated on the trio's egalitarian nature.
But it's Leonard Bernstein's two classics from the 1957 musical West Side Story that form Somewhere's centerpiece. A profoundly beautiful take on "Somewhere" leads to Jarrett's lengthy coda, "Everywhere," building this nearly 20-minute workout to a powerful climax, ultimately winding down to a gospel-tinged conclusion, while "Tonight" is taken at an unexpectedly bright clip. Peacock and DeJohnette swing more directly this time, with Jarrett's effortless motivic invention keeping secure his position in the upper echelon of improvising pianists.
Despite the 12-year gap since its last recorded work, Somewhere leaves no doubt that the special spark Jarrett, Peacock and DeJohnette first demonstrated on the bassist's Tales of Another (ECM, 1977) remains intact. If anything, Somewhere creates hope that another four years won't have to pass before this inimitable trio is heard from again.
(1988)
City and Colour - "If I Should Go Before You" (2017)
(1967 | 2017)
The marvellous remix and hi-res master of this classic which has been transformed and totally refreshed, sounding fresh and vibrant one of my albums of the year, loving Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane being added.
Something relaxing to listen to while xmas dinner is digested.
Bear's Den - "Islands" (2015)
Some classic albums I haven't played in awhile.
Just finished.......
John Berry - O Holy Night
Now Playing.......
John Berry - Christmas
Streaming on TIDAL...... Albums released 21 years apart, music pretty much the same, voice aged nicely, possibly better, John sings a very nice O Holy Night!
Merry Christmas everyone!