Passing ships
| Passing ships | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Hill studio album | ||||
|
Publication |
||||
|
admission |
November 1969 |
|||
| Label (s) | Blue Note Records | |||
|
Format (s) |
LP, CD |
|||
| occupation |
|
|||
|
Studio (s) |
Rudy Van Gelder Studio |
|||
|
||||
Passing Ships is the thirteenth music album by jazz pianist Andrew Hill . The recordings date from November 1969, but were only rediscovered by Michael Cuscuna in 2001 and released in 2003 in a new mix and in a limited 24-bit edition on Blue Note Records .
background
Andrew Hill recorded Passing Ships with a nine-member band, a nonet , which took a lot of time due to the complex song structures: “We did some of the songs 45 or 50 times. We played them over and over until we got a take completely right. "
Andrew Hills record label Blue Note had been sold some time before by its founder Alfred Lion . The new owners found the album too sophisticated and considered it commercially worthless. At that time, fusion , an amalgam of jazz and rock music, was in trend. The master tapes ended up in the archive. When the young producer Michael Cuscuna was allowed to rummage through and sort through their archives on behalf of Blue Note in 1974, Andrew Hill also made him aware of his unreleased album. Cuscuna discovered a two-track tape and listened to the first two tracks, the sound quality of which he found miserable (“It sounded like a train wreck.”).
Not until 2001 did Andrew Hill ask again. During the research it turned out that there was still an eight-track master tape. Michael Cuscuna listened to it and was enthusiastic: "It was one of the best that Andrew had ever composed." After appropriate restoration and remastering, Passing Ships was released in 2003 as a limited 24-bit CD. Blue Note Records was criticized from many sides for the limited edition and the associated accessibility of the music.
Track list
All compositions are by Andrew Hill. The recordings are from November 7 (tracks 2, 5, 6) and November 14, 1969 (1, 3, 4, 7).
- Sideways - 4:09
- Passing Ships - 7:08 am
- Plantation Bag - 8:32
- Noon Tide - 9:49
- The Brown Queen - 6:22
- Cascade - 6:27
- Yesterday's Tomorrow - 5:11
production
- Producer and photographer: Francis Wolff
- Sound engineer: Rudy Van Gelder
- Cover design: Reid Miles
- Reissue production and liner notes : Michael Cuscuna
reception
Fred Kaplan of the New York Times praised the album in his review as "Best Jazz Album of 2003". Passing Ships is Andrew Hill's most complex (“densest work”), but also the most accessible album.
Germain Linares from All About Jazz describes the music as “the finest in jazz”, following the motto of Blue Note Records .
Thom Jurek from Allmusic awarded the album 4.5 (out of five) stars. The critics Richard Cook & Brian Morton only gave the album three stars (out of four) in The Penguin Guide to Jazz ; the authors highlighted individual pieces such as “Plantation Bag”, with a “brilliant funk figure, which is merged by Howard Johnson's bass clarinet, with trumpets and Farrell's soprano above; Joe then has a solo on the tenor and delivers one of the impressive statements on record ”.
Web links
- This 'Lost' album Was Worth Finding , Fred Kaplan in the New York Times on December 7, 2003. (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thom Jurek, review on Allmusic (English). Retrieved August 18, 2015.
- ↑ Germein Linares, Review of All About Jazz from January 17, 2004 (English). Retrieved August 18, 2015.
- ↑ Fred Kaplan, This 'Lost' Album Was Worth Finding , in: New York Times, December 7, 2003.
- ↑ Fred Kaplan, This 'Lost' Album Was Worth Finding , in: New York Times, December 7, 2003.
- ↑ Germein Linares, Andrew Hill: Passing Ships (2003) , Allaboutjazz.com January 17, 2004.
- ^ Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 , p. 640.