Standards Live: At the Village Vanguard
| Standards Live: At the Village Vanguard | ||||
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| Live album by Lee Konitz | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | Enja | |||
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Format (s) |
CD |
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Title (number) |
6th |
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running time |
54:51 |
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Studio (s) |
Village Vanguard |
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Standards Live: At the Village Vanguard is a jazz album by Lee Konitz . The recordings, which were made on March 31 and April 1, 2009 at the New York jazz club Village Vanguard , were released in 2014 on Enja .
background
Lee Konitz had already recorded the album Deep Lee in autumn 2007 with the collaborative trio Minsarah, which was released in 2008. The saxophonist played again in the spring of 2009 in New York City with the members of the trio, the pianist Florian Weber , the bassist Jeff Denson and the drummer Ziv Ravitz , who now operated as his New Quartet . “I never really had a full-time band, instead I always played with different people by invitation. I was able to really improvise with the musicians on this album and always enjoyed everything that contributed to the music: creativity and being spiritually and profoundly on the same wavelength. ”That was also the opinion of critics. During the week this quartet performed at Village Vanguard , the material for two albums was recorded: In 2010, the album Live at the Village Vanguard was released by Enja, on which both originals and standards were interpreted; In 2014 the album Standards Live: At the Village Vanguard followed , which only contained standards.
At a concert by Konitz a year later - also at Village Vanguard, but this time with Dan Tepfer and Matt Wilson - Patrick Jarenwattananon noted on National Public Radio :
- “Nobody knows exactly what tunes the venerable alto saxophonist Lee Konitz had planned for his recent visit to Village Vanguard - probably because he doesn't plan his sets too much these days. He's loved one particular game over the past few years: someone in the band starts a jazz standard , and everyone else joins as soon as they figure out what it is. Sometimes the music takes on a different kind of controlled anarchy, in which freely improvised chord progressions structure the process. "
Track list
- Lee Konitz: Standards Live: At the Village Vanguard (Enja Records ENJ-9609 2)
- The Song Is You ( Jerome David Kern , Oscar Hammerstein II ) 9:33
- Sky Lark ( Hoagy Carmichael , Johnny Mercer ) 6:35
- In Your Own Sweet Way ( Dave Brubeck ) 9:43
- Just Friends ( John Klenner , Sam M. Lewis ) 9:06
- Stella by Starlight ( Ned Washington , Victor Young ) 9:41
- I Love You ( Cole Porter ) 10:14
reception
Matt Collar gave the album 3½ (out of five) stars in Allmusic and wrote, Standards Live: At the Village Vanguard featured the seasoned saxophonist with an accomplished ensemble behind him. The album contains a swinging, straightforward series of standard songs that show Konitz 'probing, heartfelt jazz style.
Klaus Huebner reviewed the album for NRW-Jazz and said that the standards “don't have to be boring and worn out”, which Konitz and his quartet demonstrated. The musicians would find their way through the repertoire in a sensitive and open-minded manner, but varied the originals very strongly during the improvisations. Lee Konitz keeps spreading new ideas during the performance, which his young colleagues absorb and return filtered and decorated. With Lee Konitz and his fellow musicians, something new is emerging, praised the author, "one cannot expect more when the word 'standards', which appears to many as a specter, makes the rounds."
The NDR editor Michael Laages wrote that the music on the album often sounds almost fragile - “but how could it be otherwise? Konitz was already 81 years old when the recordings were made. But the clarity in tone and structure of the Konitz fantasies is still impressive. In very special moments (whether in ballad or rapid pace) the co-founder of a kind of third path between bebop and cool jazz once again opens up the creative and playful dialogue - here with Weber's ways on the piano. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lee Konitz in the booklet of the CD Live at the Village Vanguard.
- ↑ “This is Lee Konitz's idea in band format,” said one critic after the group's appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival 2009. Quoted from the booklet of the CD Live at the Village Vanguard.
- ↑ Patrick Jarenwattananon: Live At The Village Vanguard - Lee Konitz Trio. National Public Radio, January 20, 2010, accessed April 19, 2020 .
- ^ Lee Konitz: Standards Live: At the Village Vanguard
- ↑ Review of Matt Collar's album at Allmusic . Retrieved April 19, 2020.
- ^ Lee Konitz: Standards Live: At the Village Vanguard. NRWjazz, March 28, 2014, accessed April 19, 2020 .
- ^ Lee Konitz: Standards Live: At the Village Vanguard. NDR, April 14, 2014, accessed on April 19, 2020 .