Jazz at the Plaza, Vol. 1

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Jazz at the Plaza, Vol. 1
Live album by Miles Davis

Publication
(s)

1973

Label (s) Columbia Records

Format (s)

LP / CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

4th

running time

41:02

occupation

production

Teo Macero , Irving Townsend

Studio (s)

Edwardian Room, Plaza Hotel, New York City

The Plaza Hotel at the 2007 centenary celebrations

Jazz at the Plaza, Vol. 1 is a jazz album by Miles Davis that was recorded on September 9, 1958 in the Edwardian Room of The Plaza Hotel in New York . It was not until September 1973 that the complete version of the recordings appeared on Columbia Records .

The album

The live recording of the Miles Davis Sextet, released 15 years later under the title Jazz at the Plaza , was made two months after the performance at the Newport Jazz Festival and half a year before the recording of Miles Davis' classic Kind of Blue . The musicians, who didn't know they were being recorded, played at a party with which the Columbia label celebrated the success of its jazz department ( "the healthy state of jazz" ). The appearance of the Duke Ellington Orchestra with guest vocalists Jimmy Rushing and Billie Holiday was also recorded and was also released in 1973 under the title Jazz at the Plaza, Vol. 2 .

The six musicians of the sextet, in addition to Miles Davis the saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley and the rhythm section made up of Bill Evans (piano), Paul Chambers (bass) and Philly Joe Jones (drums) played four jazz standards ; initially Thelonious Monk's bebop classic Straight No Chaser , which was published under the title Jazz at the Plaza , but Miles Davis was named as the composer. The recording provided the rare opportunity to hear Davis play the flugelhorn . If I Were a Bell reveals the "dichotomy" of Miles and Coltrane: "Miles plays the piece precisely with the stuffed trumpet, Coltrane boldly extends it, thundering up and down, maintaining the connection with the melody."

This was followed by the Rodgers and Hart ballad My Funny Valentine , Miles Davis' first live version of the jazz classic, "which was to be followed by ever more intense and sophisticated versions in the years that followed." The pianist Bill Evans is particularly emphasized here, as the saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley suspend: "Here he shows his ability to romantic piano improvisations in linear swing." The melody was only preserved in a skeletal structure and was replaced by "ghosts of intervals" replaces, says Thom Jurek,

This is not to say Davis had abandoned melody for mode entirely because his melodic sensibility, which was instinctual, is what made the modalism on the sextet level possible in the first place.

In Frank Loesser's If I Were a Bell from the then popular musical Guys and Dolls , Cannonball took Adderley out. Despite the shortcomings in terms of recording technology, you can hear “Miles, supported by Philly Joe's drums, driving a bursting tension to extremes with breathless speed and rapid, choppy phrasing . Coltrane's solos provide a certain relaxation with their sovereign technical adeptness. ”With the full cast they played the final number, Sonny Rollins ' Oleo , ended by The Theme .

review

Thom Jurek rates the album in Allmusic with four stars and states that “despite the excellent remastering by the Sony crew, Jazz at the Plaza is more of a curiosity than an important recording by a remarkable band”, primarily because of its dubious sound quality. The problem with the recording is that Miles Davis cannot be heard in parts of If I Were a Bell , and Evans is "as good as absent" in large parts of the album. There would have been no mixing of the recording, which was made with just two or three microphones. Nevertheless, the performance is "anything but doubtful"; Oleo is played at a "murderous pace", My Funny Valentine , although previously recorded by Davis' previous quintet for Prestige , became one of the important numbers in the sextet's repertoire, and finally Monk's standard straight, No Chaser , who played the ensemble show "in full bloom" at this performance. Davis played the subject faster than usual, and Bill Evans braided Blue Monk into his solo .

The critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton only gave the album three (out of four) stars in the Penguin Guide to Jazz ; It draws its reputation mainly from the great sessions that the Miles Davis sextet recorded in this phase. The most outstanding title of the recording, however, is My Funny Valentine . If I Were a Bell was "not one of Trane's better nights," and the interplay between the two giants Davis and Coltrane is not what one would expect.

Davis biographer Peter Wießmüller emphasizes the "extraordinary intensity and density" of the live atmosphere; as a "weak point" he criticizes the solo contributions of Cannonball Adderley: "Here at the latest, however, the slope of Adderleys into mannered phrasing in rushed tempos becomes evident."

Asif Memon emphasized the importance of the recording as a document for the evolution of the group sound of this short-lived Miles Davis ensemble, which "ultimately stands for some of the almost perfect albums in jazz".

List of titles

  • Jazz at the Plaza, Vol. 1 (Columbia PC 32470)
  1. If I Were a Bell (Frank Loesser) 8:31
  2. Oleo (Sonny Rollins) 10:38
  3. My Funny Valentine ( Richard Rodgers / Lorenz Hart ) 10:18
  4. Straight No Chaser (Thelonious Monk) / Bye Bye (The Theme) (Davis) 10:57

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Only three tracks ( Straight, No Chaser, My Funny Valentine and Oleo ) were previously released on the 1958 CBS album Miles .
  2. ↑ Pianist Bill Evans later stated that the musicians who were still alive in 1973 were paid by the Columbia label. See Peter Pettinger: Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings . Yale University Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-3000-7193-1 , p. 60.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Discographic references of the Miles Davis discography in Jazzdisco.org
  2. ↑ Quoted from Irving Townsend in the Original Liner Notes 1973
  3. ^ Review of the album Jazz at the Plaza, Vol. 2 at Allmusic (English). Retrieved May 8, 2011.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Peter Wießmüller: Miles Davis , Gauting, Oreos, p. 122 f.
  5. ↑ a b Review of Asim Memon's album at All About Jazz
  6. ↑ a b Review of the album Jazz at the Plaza, Vol. 1 by Thom Jurek at Allmusic (English). Retrieved May 8, 2011.
  7. ↑ a b Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 , p. 375.