Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions 1989: For Warne Marsh
| Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions 1989: For Warne Marsh | ||||
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| Studio album by Anthony Braxton | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | HatHut Records | |||
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Format (s) |
CD |
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Title (number) |
12 |
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running time |
74:56 |
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Pia and Werner X. Uehlinger |
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Studio (s) |
Sage & Sound Recording Studio , Hollywood, Los Angeles |
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Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions 1989: For Warne Marsh is a jazz album by Anthony Braxton , which was recorded on December 10 and 11, 1989 at Sage & Sound Recording Studio in Hollywood and was released in 1990 by HatHut Records .
The album
Braxton's recognition of early jazz innovators such as Thelonious Monk , Lennie Tristano , Warne Marsh and Paul Desmond is documented in his interviews and in music, starting with What's New in the Tradition ( SteepleChase , 1974) through to his piano recordings in New York's Knitting Factory in the 1990s; he regularly reminded his listeners of his roots in jazz without imitating the style of other musicians.
Braxton saw this album as an homage to the saxophonist Warne Marsh, who studied with Lennie Tristano from 1948, and to Tristano's band of the late 1940s and early 1950s, in which alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and guitarist Billy Bauer also played.
- "My music / musical system was not built in a negative reaction to the tradition - it was inspired in agreement with the tradition."
His teacher Jack Gell introduced the fourteen-year-old Braxton to a number of compositions, such as Bob Graettinger's City of Glass (interpreted by the Stan Kenton Orchestra) and Tristano's pieces Marionette , Sax of a Kind and Wow (which were later collected on the album Crosscurrents ). Braxton's interest in this “white music” of the early 1950s - in the liner notes he mentions the racist hostility on the part of his Afro-American colleagues - was finally aroused by the album Lee Konitz Meets Jimmy Giuffre , especially by the solos of Warne Marsh in The Song Is You and When Your Lover Has Gone : "Listen to the inner logic of his solos, his concept of rhythm and time, his profound use of harmonies, and above all his inventiveness." Braxton brought his admiration for Warne Marsh as early as 1973 in Composition No. 23M (on the album Four Compositions 1973 ), characterized by leaps in intervals in the unison playing of piano and alto saxophone, again in 1974 in Marshmallow (In In the Tradition Vol. 1 ) and 1985 in Background Music (in Seven Standards Vol. 1 ) .
In Braxton's own band, Jon Raskin played baritone saxophone, Dred Scott played piano (who made his recording debut here), Cecil McBee on bass and Andrew Cyrille on drums. The program comprised - according to the album title - eight compositions by Tristano, supplemented by two jazz standards (from the repertoire of Tristano and Marsh) by Irving Berlin ( How Deep Is the Ocean ) and by Vincent Youmans ( Time on My Hands ) as well as a composition by Warne Marsh ( Sax of a Kind ).
The album begins with four Tristano pieces, first Two Not One played at high speed , followed by 317E 32nd Street at medium tempo, where Braxton and Raskin present the theme in unison . Dreams play Braxton and pianist Scott as a duo; the fast bebop piece Lennies Pennies again with a quintet, in which all musicians make solo contributions.
In the ballad How Deep Is the Ocean Braxton plays the flute, accompanied only by the rhythm section; after the fast Tristano number Victory Ball follows Warne Marsh's Sax of Kind ; Braxton (soprano), Raskin (baritone) and Scott (piano) play it in a trio. The relatively abstract composition is followed by the catchy Lennie Bird with Cyrille's typical Bop drumming; Scott and Braxton have longer solos before the unison theme ends the piece. Braxton plays the lyrical Time on My Hands again on the flute. After a second take of the Victory Ball , the Tristano numbers Baby (Braxton / Scott in a duo) and April (quintet) follow .
Reception of the album
In his review at Allmusic , Thom Jurek gave the album the highest rating and praised “the lyrical brilliance and subtle grace of this tribute”. He went on to write: "Tristano's songbook - which includes Charlie Parker's sense of harmony and his own sense of lyrical melodies and counterpoints - is performed flawlessly by his band." They played with a completely different sense of clarity and emotional intensity than they did the time interval allows. This is how it succeeds in Lennie's Pennies , in which Braxton and Raskin approached the subtle melodic inventiveness of the 1952 original. Irving Berlin's warbling lyrical How Deep Is the Ocean they give "a power of beauty and complexity". In Warne Marsh's Sax of a Kind Braxton offers his most emotional game, interested in arousing Marsh's own feeling for the composition that he encountered when he heard this piece from him:
- "Braxton sails with no edges, slowly allowing the tune to build from his soprano and inverting the tune's mode just as the line slips into improvisation. It's a ballad without a backbone, just a feeling, spreading over the entire body of the track until all that's left are the mode changes in the solos - truly beautiful ".
Richard Cook and Brian Morton gave the album the second highest rating, but limited the role of second saxophonist John Raskin, where "it is not clear whether he fully understood the idiom". The authors, however, highlight the playing of the pianist Dred Scott and the "veterans" in the rhythm section , Cecil McBee and Andrew Cyrille. His appropriation of standards is "no less radical" than Braxton's own compositions.
The pieces of the album
- HatHut Records CD 6052
- Two Not One - 7:20
- 317 East 32nd Street - 8:20 am
- Dreams - 5:46
- Lennie's Pennies - 9:25
- How Deep Is the Ocean? (Berlin) - 4:47
- Victory Ball - 4:50
- Sax of a Kind (Marsh) - 4:10
- Lennie-Bird - 6:30
- Time on My Hands (Youmans) - 4:55
- Victory Ball [Take 2] - 5:12
- Baby - 5:15
- April - 8:26 am
- All compositions (unless otherwise stated) are by Lennie Tristano.
- The additionally recorded tracks Wow, Dreams (take 2) and Lennies Pennies (take 2) were released on the album Kimus # 4 (hatARt 16004, 1991).
Web link
- Review of Thom Jurek's album at Allmusic (English). Retrieved January 8, 2011.
swell
- Anthony Braxton: Liner Notes from the Album (1990)
- Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP and Cassette . 2nd Edition. Penguin, London 1994, ISBN 0-14-017949-6 .
- Art Lange: Liner Notes of the Album (1990)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marc Corroto: review of the album Standards (Bruxelles 2006) in All About Jazz
- ↑ a b c Anthony Braxton: Liner Notes of the Album (1990)
- ^ Art Lange, Liner Notes (1990)
- ↑ Review of the album Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions 1989: For Warne Marsh by Thom Jurek at Allmusic (English). Retrieved January 8, 2011.
- ↑ Quotation Cook & Morton, Penguin Guide "to Jazz", 1993, p. 162.
- ^ Anthony Braxton discography
Remarks
- ↑ Marsh recorded his composition in 1949 in the Lennie Tristano Sextet with Lee Konitz, appeared on the aforementioned Crosscurrents album, later also partially re-released under Lennie Tristano / Warne Marsh - Intuition . See Jazzdiscography - Tristano Discography
- ↑ 1952 the Lennie Tristano Quintet (consisting of Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, Tristano, Peter Ind and Al Levitt ) played the pieces Lennie's Pennies , 317 East 32nd , You Go to My Head , April and the numbers Sound-Lee and Back in Toronto Home , released on the album Lennie Tristano Quintet Live In Toronto in 1952 (Jazz Records). See Jazzdiscography - Tristano Discography
- ↑ Tristano played the composition in 1949 with the Metronome All-Stars , from Dizzy Gillespie , Miles Davis , Fats Navarro , Kai Winding , JJ Johnson , Buddy DeFranco , Charlie Parker , Charlie Ventura , Ernie Caceres , Billy Bauer , Eddie Safranski and Shelly Manne . See Jazzdiscography - Tristano Discography