Point of departure
| Point of departure | ||||
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| Andrew Hill studio album | ||||
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Publication |
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admission |
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| Label (s) | Blue Note Records | |||
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Format (s) |
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Title (number) |
5 (LP) / 8 (CD) |
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running time |
40:07 / 57:55 (CD) |
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Studio (s) |
Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey |
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Point of Departure ( English for Departure or starting situation is) a jazz album by pianist Andrew Hill , taken on 21 March 1964 Studio Rudy Van Gelder in Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey , and in 1965 released on Blue Note Records . The album is considered a classic by many critics; Kenny Mathieson calls it the "key record of the era".
Prehistory of the album
The point of departure was after Black Fire, Smokestack and Judgment! the fourth album by pianist and composer Andrew Hill for the Blue Note label. Alfred Lion, who recognized Hill's talent immediately, had him record material for a total of five albums between November 1963 and June 1964; Point of Departure was written shortly after Hill's Blue Note debut Black Fire . The musicians of his sextet were Eric Dolphy and Joe Henderson on saxophone - Dolphy also played bass clarinet and flute here - as well as Richard Davis on bass, Tony Williams on drums and Kenny Dorham on trumpet. Dorham, Henderson and Dolphy had already emerged with their own Blue Note productions by this time; Dolphy had his classic Out to Lunch a month earlier ! recorded, on which Richard Davis and Tony Williams had also contributed. Davis, who played in every Andrew Hills session in 1963/64, came from Chicago like Hill. Hill also brought in the 18-year-old drummer Tony Williams, who shortly thereafter became internationally known as a member of the Miles Davis Quintet.
Music of the album
Bob Blumenthal mentions in his text accompanying the 1999 re-release that Point of Departure was the only occasion Dolphy and Tony Williams recorded with Hill: “Dolphy's virtuosity in the fields of harmonies and unusual musical structures is being tested here. "His performance prompted down-beat author Pete Welding to comment," It's Dolphy who completely dominates this music. "But it is the subtle nuances of the drummer and complex rhythmic responses that shape the music of the album, according to Blumenthal . According to Nat Hentoff , who wrote the liner notes for the album, Point of Departure was "another series of steps towards more [musical] freedom" than marked his two previous productions. Andrew Hill himself said: “Because Tony Williams was there, I was rhythmically freer. And the way I arranged the title, it enabled the musicians of chord - Pattern departing and about to play tonal centers. The set is also freer from a harmonious point of view. And there is also a wider range of moods than the other two [LPs], and the personalities of the musicians are broad, so there is freer interaction between completely different types of people. "
The first title Refuge is autobiographical;
- “ It's about someone trying to find a refuge and learning that there isn't any, that there's no place to hide. No matter where you look, you're still the one who's looking. As for the structure, it's build like a blues - two-twelve-bar sections - but harmonically it's much different. And the harmony is such that one scale can fit the whole tune so each musician can pick a tonal center for his solo within that scale. "
New Monastery got its title after Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion heard it and Wolff noticed that it reminded him of an old composition by Thelonious Monk .
- "I wanted to have a march feeling," said Hill, "without actually playing a march, I wanted something of that old, original ragtime feeling, which then stands in the way of the solos being played as freely as possible."
Hill composed the following title, Spectrum , “as an attempt to represent a wide range of moods in one title”. “Kenny [Dorham's] solo makes the search clear, Eric [Dolphy's] alto solo is meant to be peaceful, but with a shadow of doubt. And in the 5/4 section, Erics, Kennys, and Joe [Henderson] 's game is agonizing. "
Flight 19 is structured in the form of 16 bars, four fast, two slow, again four fast and two slow. Dedication , the final title originally by Hill Cadaver , "was meant to express the feeling of a great loss."
Track list
All compositions are by Andrew Hill .
page 1
- 1. Refuge - 12:12
- 2. New Monastery - 7:00 am
Page 2
- 3. Spectrum - 9:42
- 4. Flight 19 - 4:10
- 5. Dedication - 6:40
Bonus tracks (CD)
- 6. Flight 19 (Alternate Take) - 3:46
- 7. Dedication - 6:38
- 8. Dedication (Alternate Take) - 7:00
reception
| source | rating |
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| Allmusic |
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| All about jazz |
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| Penguin Guide to Jazz |
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The album is now regarded as a classic jazz album of the sixties; Ben Ratliff recorded the album in A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings . Gary Giddins praised the album: Point of Departure, in particular, is a benchmark, covering the ground between modality and freedom. Brian Priestley considered it the high point of Hill's work in the 1960s that the post-boppers Dorham and Henderson combined with Eric Dolphy with sophisticated material in such a way that it brought out the best in them.
Thom Jurek gave the album the highest rating in Allmusic and said that it was "the line-up created for a jazz fire dance." It was a brilliant session, essential for any major jazz collection and an album that is still going strong in the 21st century Show the way to the future of jazz.
Richard Cook and Brian Morton gave the album the highest rating of four stars and the additional crown, calling it one of the greatest records of the 1960s. With Point of Departure , Hill's skills as a composer and arranger would be fundamentally mature.
The specialist magazine Jazzwise ranks the album at number 46 out of 100 Jazz Albums That Shook the World .
The jazz musician Loren Schoenberg wrote about Point of Departure :
"This is truly timeless music in the sense that it straddles stylistic boundaries with naturalness and beauty that are anything but eclectic or self-conscious. [...] What is equally astonishing is how Hill took a handful of players in 1964 with widely varied approaches - [...] and creates a situation where they could be themselves, deal with some new and challenging material, and come up with a unified artistic whole. "
Pitchfork voted the album 198th out of the 200 best albums of the 1960s.
Web links
- Review of Thom Jurek's album Point of Departure on Allmusic (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Scott Yanow : Jazz: A Regional Exploration , p. 221.
- ^ A b Gary Giddins : Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century , p. 142.
- ^ Kenny Mathieson: Cookin: Hard Bop and Soul Jazz 1954-65 .
- ↑ a b c Bob Blumenthal: A New Look at 'Point of Departure' . Liner Notes 1999.
- ↑ a b c Nat Hentoff, Original Liner Notes.
- ↑ a b c d e Andrew Hill in an interview with Nat Hentoff, Original Liner Notes.
- ↑ a b Review of Thom Jurek's album Point of Departure at Allmusic (English). Retrieved June 27, 2011.
- ↑ Andrew Hill: Point Of Departure on All About Jazz
- ^ A b Cook & Morton: Penguin Guide to Jazz. 6th edition. 2003, p. 719 f.
- ^ Ben Ratliff: The New York Times Essential Library: Jazz: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings , Henry Holt and Company, 2002.
- ↑ Ian Carr , Brian Priestley , Digby Fairweather (Eds.): Rough Guide Jazz. London 1999, ISBN 1-85828-137-7 .
- ^ Loren Schoenberg: The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Jazz. Berkley Publishing, New York 2002, ISBN 0-399-52794-X , p. 223.
- ↑ The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s on Pitchfork