The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakepearean Festival
| The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival | ||||
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| Oscar Peterson's live album | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | Verve Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP, CD |
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Title (number) |
6/11 |
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running time |
34:36 (LP), 75:03 (CD) |
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Studio (s) |
Live, Ontario |
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The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival is a jazz album by the Oscar Peterson Trio starring Ray Brown and Herb Ellis , recorded on August 8, 1956 at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario and released on Verve Records . The playing time of the CD released in 1993 was more than doubled compared to the LP with four previously unreleased recordings of the concert.
The music of the album
In addition to his numerous obligations on the Jazz at the Philharmonic tours, Peterson began to work with the trio line-up piano / guitar / bass in the early 1950s , initially with Barney Kessel and occasionally supplemented with drums in a quartet. The Oscar Peterson Trio with Herb Ellis and Ray Brown was one of the few drum-less trios that followed the tradition of the Nat Cole trio (with guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Johnny Miller) and the Art Tatum trio with guitarist Tiny Grimes and played bassist Slam Stewart ; In the liner notes, James Isaacs refers to the trios of Ahmad Jamal (with Ray Crawford on guitar and Eddie Calhoun on bass) popular in the 1950s, as well as the trio of guitarist Tal Farlow with Eddie Costa and Vinnie Burke . Peterson's trio consisted of this line-up for a total of five years - from 1953 to 1958.
The music the trio played at the festival consisted of popular classics from the Great American Songbook such as How High the Moon or Rodgers and Harts Falling in Love with Love , as well as jazz standards such as Ellington's Love You Madly , Monks 52nd Street Theme or Nuages des three Django Reinhardt, who died years earlier . There were also two original compositions by the pianist, Noreen's Nocturne (which he had written for Noreen Nimmonds, wife of clarinetist Phil Nimmonds) and Daisy's Dream (named after Peterson's sister).
In the original record text, Oscar Peterson pointed out that when selecting the pieces and their arrangements, he wanted to emphasize the "different instrumental combinations and the soloists within the group". A decisive factor in the recordings in the control room was John Lewis , who knew the changes in balance and structures in Peterson's arrangements from previous sessions.
The concept for Ellis in Nuages was less based on Reinhardt's original recording than on the Charlie Christian solo in Benny Goodman's versions of Memories of You and Rose Room . Ray Brown played bowed bass in the chamber music arranged Daisy's Dream . Love You Madly is built on a dialogue between piano and bass. In the opening chorus of Noreen's Nocturne , Peterson played through the melodic independence of the three instruments; the well-known standard How High the Moon formed a feature for Ray Brown's solo over two choruses.
Reception of the album
Richard Cook and Brian Morton awarded the album the second highest rating. Unlike Tal Farlow and Nat Cole, the Peterson band would never have played that wide and open. Here, however, for once, Peterson would withdraw and let the music flow. The authors point out the fact that Brown and Ellis had spent the entire afternoon trying out harmonic variations that they could bring into play in the evening.
The critic Alan Zeffert in Jazz on Record 1917-1967 described the live album as the best LP of the group, it was "a live performance that brings out the best of the creativity of the trio."
Scott Yanow confirmed this view in Allmusic ( "Essential music from a classic band" ), gave it the highest grade and stated: Although the solos were always played passionately and spontaneously, it was the very complex arrangements that made this recording unique.
The title of the album
- The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival ( Clef MGC 751 (unreleased); Verve MGV 8024 (LP), Verve 513752-2 (CD))
- Falling in Love with Love ( Lorenz Hart , Richard Rodgers ) - 6:15
- How About You? ( Ralph Freed , Burton Lane ) - 5:53
- Flamingo ( Edmund Anderson , Ted Grouya ) - 4:59
- Swinging on a Star ( Johnny Burke , Jimmy Van Heusen ) - 5:33
- Noreen's Nocturne (Oscar Peterson) - 5:31
- Gypsy in My Soul (Clay Boland, Moe Jaffe ) - 6:23
- Nuages ( Django Reinhardt ) - 5:05
- How High the Moon (Nancy Hamilton, Morgan Lewis ) - 9:44
- Love You Madly ( Duke Ellington ) - 8:01
- 52nd Street Theme ( Thelonious Monk ) - 4:13
- Daisy's Dream (Peterson) - 13:26
- Tracks 7-11 are bonus tracks and not on the original album (Verve MGV 8024).
More albums by the Peterson Trio with Ellis and Brown
- Jazz At The Philharmonic, Vol. 16 (Clef) or Jazz At The Philharmonic, Vol. 9 (Verve, 1953)
- Oscar Peterson Plays Vincent Youmans (Clef, 1953)
- Pastel Moods By Oscar Peterson (Verve, 1954)
- Oscar Peterson Plays Harry Warren (Clef, 1954)
- Nostalgic Memories By Oscar Peterson (Clef / Verve, 1954)
- At Zardi’s ( Pablo Records , 1955)
- Oscar Peterson / In Concert (Verve, 1956)
- The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Concertgebouw (Verve, 1957)
literature
- Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ John Lewis also performed at the festival with the Modern Jazz Quartet . See Oscar Peterson's comments in the Liner Notes 1956.