Art Deco (album)
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| Studio album by Don Cherry | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | A&M Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP, CD |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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running time |
56:23 |
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John Snyder |
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Studio (s) |
Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ |
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Art Deco is a jazz album by Don Cherry . The recordings were made on August 27, 28 and 30, 1988 in the Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs and were released in 1989 on A&M Records . Art Deco was also the first production of the A&M Modern Masters Jazz Series , on which until 1990 a. a. Recordings by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers , Gerry Mulligan , Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor released.
background
Since 1976, the members of Ornette Coleman's early bands occasionally played together in the project Old and New Dreams . In the late 1980s, the members of the first Ornette Coleman Quartet - including Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins - were busy remembering their early years in Los Angeles. Haden's Californian Quartet West album (with Higgins) was recorded in 1986, Coleman's project In All Languages (with a reactivation of the quartet) in 1987, and Cherry's Art Deco with Haden, Higgins and the lesser-known musician James Clay in 1988.
The producer John Snyder had a special affinity for Coleman and his environment; he had produced some of their key recording sessions from the 1970s, including Coleman's Dancing in Your Head , Haden's The Golden Number, and James Blood Ulmer's Tales of Captain Black . Art Deco was Snyder's first production for the newly created Modern Masters Jazz series from A&M Records. According to Snyder, Cherry played a conventional trumpet in the studio, originally owned by Mike Lawrence and given to Snyder by Lawrence's widow Roberta.
Although the quartet had played Vanguard prior to the recording session at the Village , the repertoire looked essentially "random". Whole band titles include When Will the Blues Leave, Bemsha Swing, and The Blessing, all of which have been a long part of Cherry's career - he played the latter two with John Coltrane on the Atlantic album The Avantgarde (1960). There are also three short unaccompanied cadences by Cherry (“Maffy”), Haden (“Folk Medley”) and Higgins (“Passing”) as well as two long tenor saxophone trio ballads without Cherry with “ Body and Soul ” and “I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face ”, a musical song by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe . The original compositions by Don Cherry that appeared on the album were still little known at the time: According to Ethan Iverson , "Art Deco" (which was released in 1985 on Cherry's Barclay album Home Boy (Sister Out) in a first version is was) a “cheeky” swing number that Billie Holiday has dedicated himself to, and “Compute” is a “free up-tempo excursion” based on Cherry's and Haden's regular band Old and New Dreams .
Track list
- Don Cherry: Art Deco (A&M Records - A&M Modern Masters Jazz Series 395 258-2)
- Art Deco (Don Cherry) 8:39
- When Will the Blues Leave (Ornette Coleman) 7:08
- Body and Soul ( Johnny Green ) 6:30
- Bemsha Swing ( Denzil Best , Thelonious Monk ) 9:39
- Maffy (Don Cherry) 0:39
- Folk Medley (Charlie Haden) 2:42
- The Blessing (Ornette Coleman) 5:32
- Passing (Billy Higgins) 3:00
- I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face ( Alan Jay Lerner , Frederick Loewe ) 6:50
- Compute (Ornette Coleman) 5:05
reception
Ethan Iverson wrote in JazzTimes that Art Deco was "an essential album from the later days of the trumpeter," which testifies to a lasting musical partnership. James Clay's playing in “Compute” reminds me of the tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman , who also worked in the Coleman circle. On the rest of the album, Clay is "a wonderful keeper of the flame", who offers soulful sonority and classical jazz phrasing . Cherry herself is in good shape. “There was never a weight of thoughts in his grades. They come from his horn, connected to deeper things: the earth, the wind, the cycle of life. ”As good as the two wind instruments are at Art Deco , the rhythm section could be the real highlight , according to the author . “From their first meeting in the late 1950s, Haden and Higgins would be together forever, a punch with panache and depth, both ultra-modern and back in the cabin. Every recording they are on is by definition essential. ”It was nice to hear them one last time with Don Cherry.
Scott Yanow gave the album four (out of 5) stars in Allmusic , pointing out that although it is not mentioned anywhere outside of this CD, this session is a reunion. Trumpeter Don Cherry is reunited with bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins from the early Ornette Coleman Quartet and above all with tenor saxophonist James Clay. Clay, who played with Cherry in Los Angeles in the 1950s and brought some recordings back to Texas, had been forgotten for decades. Fortunately, his game is pretty strong, so the recordings turn out to be surprisingly bop-oriented sessions. Consisting of outstanding standards, a few original compositions by the group members and three Ornette Coleman tracks (including the classic "The Blessing"), this set is easily accessible and finds all musicians in top form.
Ian Carr wrote in the Rough Guide Jazz that Clay fits well into the group, but Cherry is not in top form. Richard Cook and Brian Morton gave the album the highest rating of four stars in 1993 (but only 3½ stars in later editions); In her opinion, Cherry - with his first record deal with a major label - recorded a relatively conventional album. As a trumpeter, he is to be found opposite a straight ahead playing saxophonist playing the Texas tenor style. While the two Coleman pieces “The Blessing” and “Compute” invited a more free playing stance, the version of Monk's “Bemsha Swing” was rather indifferent. Clay's game is great; at the same time he acts like a Coleman ancestor on the tenor. Cherry, however, who mostly plays with the damper, "seems to have returned to a cross between his old, rather cautious self and Miles Davis in his middle period."
Individual evidence
- ↑ A&M Modern Masters Jazz Series at Discogs
- ↑ a b c d Ethan Iverson : Chronology: Don Cherry's Reunion Blues. In: JazzTimes. October 4, 2019, accessed October 13, 2019 .
- ↑ Don Cherry: Art Deco at Discogs
- ^ Review of the album at Allmusic (English). Retrieved October 13, 2019.
- ↑ Ian Carr, Brian Priestley , Digby Fairweather (Eds.): Rough Guide Jazz. The Rough Guides, London 1995, ISBN 1-85828-137-7 .
- ↑ a b cit. Richard Cook, Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide to Jazz. 1993, p. 237.
- ↑ Dave Oliphant ( Texan Jazz: The lives and careers of jazz musicians from Texas. Austin 1996, p. 434) came to a similar interpretation of Clay's closeness to free jazz in this title .