Timeless Portraits and Dreams

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Timeless Portraits and Dreams
Studio album by Geri Allen

Publication
(s)

2006

Label (s) Telarc Records

Format (s)

CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

15th

occupation

production

Geri Allen, Elaine Martone

Studio (s)

Avatar Studio A, New York City

chronology
The Life is a Song
(2004) 		Timeless Portraits and Dreams Jazzpar Concerts 2003
(2007)
George Shirley, 1961

Timeless Portraits and Dreams is a jazz album by pianist Geri Allen , recorded on March 16-17, 2006 at Avatar Studio A in New York City, and released on August 22, 2006 by Telarc. The similar to a suite -scale album deals to Allen's statement to the "Connections" ( connections ) and the spiritual foundations of African-American experience.

The album

The conception of this album came about during Geri Allen's teaching activity at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor . There she worked with the student choir Cass Tech Madrigal Singers . Finally, jazz singer Carmen Lundy and opera singer George Shirley joined the performance as soloists , as well as Jimmy Cobb on drums. "That concert helped me a lot to shape my ideas for this album," wrote Allen in the liner notes .

Geri Allen names I Have a Dream , which Mary Lou Williams wrote after the assassination attempt on Martin Luther King in 1968 , in reference to his speech I Have a Dream at the March on Washington for the central title of the album, around which all other compositions are grouped Work and Freedom (1963), and which later became part of Williams' jazz fair Music for Peace . With reference to the pianist and composer, Allen had already recorded the album Zodiac Suite Revisited with the Mary Lou Williams Collective in 2004 while she was teaching at Howard University , which is based on Williams' Zodiac Suite (1945).

Around this work, in which the tenor singer George Shirley and the saxophonist Donald Walden participated as guest musicians, Allen grouped the traditional Oh Freedom and her own compositions. These include the title pieces Portraits and Dreams and Timeless Portraits and Dreams , Our Lady, dedicated to Billie Holiday , and In Real Time , with her husband, trumpeter Wallace Roney, as the soloist. This is followed by the foreign compositions Melchezedik (from the pen of her brother-in-law Antoine Roney), Embraceable You by George Gershwin , La Strada by Nino Rota , Lil Hardin Armstrong's ballad Just for a Thrill , the soul title Well Done (written by R&B singer Kenny Lattimore ) and A-Leu-Cha by Charlie Parker . The bassist Ron Carter , who participated in the session, contributed his composition Nearly .

The album begins with a short piano solo on the traditional Oh Freedom , which dates back to the post- Civil War era and is mostly associated with Odetta and Joan Baez , who sang it on the 1963 March on Washington. The trio follows Antoine Roney's composition Melchezedik , with wordless accompaniment of the Atlanta Jazz Chorus and with Allen's arrangement with blues and gospel elements reminiscent of compositions from Keith Jarrett's early work. Ron Carter has a solo carried out in the background by Allen's ostinato play . Portraits and Dreams is a short post-bop composition by Allen, "with melodic and harmonic twists and bell-like clusters that concentrate the trio as an interactive unit."

The singer Carmen Lundy, in the Spiritual Well Done emerged, followed by Allen's solo on Nino Rota's film theme La Strada from the same Fellini film that "with its dark lines and harp -like cascades equally on the traditions of European classical music as American jazz roots anknüpft . “Mary Lou Williams' music and lyrics for I Have a Dream were arranged by Carmen Lundy. First of all, saxophonist Donald Walden has a solo before the strong tenor voice of George Shirley begins, accompanied by the choir in the end. This is followed by Ron Carter's Nearly , "an intricately woven blues" in which Allen coils around the blues forms of Carter's bass lines.

Mary Lou Williams, ca.1946. Photograph by William P. Gottlieb

In the joint composition of Allen / Roney in real time is Wallace Roney emerged; In the performance as well as in the composition, the piano and trumpet keep the lead by mirroring the role of the other. This is followed by three jazz standards , initially in a new interpretation of George Gershwin's Embraceable You from 1930, followed by Herbie Hancock's arrangement from his album Gershwin's World (1998). Everyone “plays an abstract version that fits the introspective character of the suite”. Allen's arrangement of Charlie Parker's bebop number Ah-Leu-Cha is based on the counterpoint of the two horns in Parker's September 1948 recording of the title with Miles Davis , in this case “their two hands serve as horns, over a furious walking bass and constant propulsive percussion, with Cobb's solo as the epicenter of the title. ”With the rearrangement of Lil Hardin Armstrong's Just for a Thrill , she points out that Louis Armstrong's wife was the first to“ free the pianist's left hand ”.

The following tracks are again Geri Allen's own compositions; With her tribute to Billie Holiday she points out that the singer “was elegant and refined in her approach to the blues.” Allen takes up the phrasing of Holiday and her musical partner Lester Young in her play in Our Lady (For Billie Holiday) . In the last part of the title Wallace Roney contributes a solo on the stuffed trumpet . Allen wrote the music and lyrics for the title track Timeless Portraits and Dreams for voice (again Carmen Lundy), piano and choir (Atlanta Jazz Chorus). The composition is part of the commissioned work For the Healing of Nations , a suite dedicated to the victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and performed in 2006 at the Walt Whitman Arts Center in Camden, New Jersey . Lundy begins the song with a passionate call ( hold onto our dreams ) over Allen's chords, which then turns into single-note play. Allen's lyrics, like the whole album, talk about connections:

Geri Allen
"Dreams are floating streams ... bridges ... peace and love, our lives connected."

The album closes with a brief reprise of the theme Portraits and Dreams .

The album includes a bonus CD titled Lift Every Voice and Sing performed by George Shirley and the Atlanta Jazz Chorus conducted by Dwright Andrews.

reception

The reviews of the album were mostly benevolent, the American music magazine Hi-Fi News wrote, " Pianist Allen offers calm, measured and beautiful trio music "; the music critic Ken Dryden described the album in Allmusic as highly recommended and rated it with four (out of five) stars; The mixture of jazz, spirituals , sacred works and original compositions by Geri Allen is impressive . If some jazz fans preferred their instrumental recordings, they would be denied access to this stimulating session.

Terry Perkins wrote in JazzTimes that Allen's compositions always take up personal themes and that they deal with spiritual influences with this recording. By drawing in other guests in addition to her accompanying musicians Ron Carter and Jimmy Cobb, she ensures a high degree of stylistic variety. Highlights of the album are Allen's inspired interpretation of Nino Rota's La Strada , an impressive solo in Gershwin's Embraceable You , which is a bow to Herbie Hancock , and a swinging cover version of Charlie Parker's Ah-Leu-Cha :

" Allen's unique, distinctive keyboard style shines brightly throughout this recording ".

One of the highlights of the album is the critic Woodrow Wilkins Allen's solo in the middle section of In Real Time , in which she is accompanied by Ron Carter's double bass. Cobb's drumming is subtle but effective. Lundy, Walden, Roney, Shirley and the Atlanta Jazz Chorus supported the trio with great results. Together they would offer a “ gallery of emotions, thought-provoking messages and good jazz ”.

Andrea Canter sees Allen's work in a line of tradition with the Zodiac Suite (by Mary Lou Williams) by exploring the spiritual roots of jazz . Timeless Portraits and Dreams was

"A uniquely structured set of original compositions, spirituals and classic jazz tunes that form a cohesive, 14-part suite 'about jazz connections', the common denominator being 'one source: The Most High' as ​​Allen states in her extensive liner notes" . '

The actual incongruent mélange of compositions by such dissimilar artists as Lil Hardin Armstrong, George Gershwin, Charlie Parker, Mary Lou Williams, Antoine Roney and Ron Carter would get a seamless, coherent whole through Allen's skilful arrangement and classification. With or without the (additional) track 15, Timeless Portraits and Dreams is Geri Allen's most personal and eloquent mixture of composition, arrangement and performance so far.

Ron Carter; 2008

Will Layman argues, however, that the album, despite the claim to want to be a concept album, has its strongest moments beyond the "concept"; Allen talks a lot [in the liner notes] about “jazz” and its role in the African American experience; write about " connections " and about " The Most High ", and their program is clearly to be understood as a kind of dialogue between the secular and the spiritual side of this music. Also, the presence of the Atlanta Jazz Chorus and opera tenor George Shirley formed the most serious moments on this album. But it is a fact that the best parts of Timeless Portraits & Dreams are those in which "the very considerable trio" of Allen, Ron Carter and Jimmy Cobb simply swing .

The best sections of the album are the tracks in the middle, "a series of unexcited tracks that don't interfere with singers and extravagances." This begins with the straight-forward blues played by Ron Carter, Nearly , followed by a quartet with Wallace Roney ( In Real Time ), which hints at pleasant reminiscences of the Miles Davis of the 1960s, but plays with a healthy sense of individual harmonic exploration. In the Hancock-influenced arrangement of Embraceable You, the trio also play with gorgeous control, and surprisingly flexible in Charlie Parker's Ah-Leu-Cha . Perhaps the best track of all is the rarely played Lil Hardin track Just for a Thrill , where the trio achieves a balance of time, harmony and melody similar to chamber music . Here Cobb masters his brooms with mastery and Carter Carter fills every empty space with his glissandos and vocalized slides .

On the other hand, there are the “exhausted concept pieces” that seem “unbalanced and clumsy”. Well Done , the gospel / soul piece by Kenny Lattimore with a "pseudo-bossa arrangement"; Mary Lou Williams' “I Have a Dream” features Donald Walden's tenor saxophone for 90 pleasant seconds, but the moment the operatic voice of George Shirley appears, “overripe and gospelized”, the jazz chorus suddenly turns completed. On the other hand, the title track offered a very pleasant duet by Carmen Lundy with Geri Allen, which at the end developed into a deeply familiar dialogue. Will Layman sums up:

"But I can't help feeling that the most spiritual and meaningful music on this record is the good stuff in the middle - the straight rapport of three or four musicians playing straight-ahead blues and jazz and showing how the magic of the African- American cultural heritage has created a mature, even classical art form. Without any choruses or operatic flourishes, Allen, Carter, and Cobb are all that anyone could need. "

Track list

Jimmy Cobb
  • Geri Allen: Timeless Portraits and Dreams (Telarc 83645)
Disc 1
  1. Oh Freedom (trad.) - 1:52
  2. Melchezedik (Antoine Roney) - 7:06
  3. Portraits and Dreams (Allen) - 2:27
  4. Well Done (Lattimore, McClain) - 5:22
  5. La Strada (Rota) - 4:21
  6. I Have a Dream (Williams) - 2:23
  7. Nearly (Carter) - 4:27
  8. In Real Time (Allen, Roney) - 5:40
  9. Embraceable You (Gershwin) - 2:48
  10. Ah-Leu-Cha (Parker) - 4:51
  11. Just for a Thrill (Armstrong) - 4:21
  12. Our Lady (For Billie Holiday) (Allen) - 5:59
  13. Timeless Portraits and Dreams (Allen) - 5:05
  14. Portraits and Dreams (reprise) - 1:38
Disc 2
  1. Lift Every Voice and Sing (Johnson) - 3:52

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ George Shirley was the first African American tenor at the Metropolitan Opera in 1961 ; see. Biography of George Shirley at Afrocentric Voices , Woodrow Wilkins: Album review in All About Jazz
  2. ↑ Andrea Canter points out that the title on the album cover is erroneously labeled as Solo piano .
  3. ↑ In the original: its dark lines and harp-like cascades connecting as much to European classical traditions as to American jazz roots.
  4. ↑ In the original: "her two hands serving as horns over a furiously walking bass and constantly driving percussion, with Cobb's solo serving as the track's epicenter."
  5. ↑ Andrea Canter deals with the facts of this special bonus disc and speculates why another CD was “wasted” for the one track of less than three minutes in length, which at this point seems like a displaced coda because the main CD would have offered enough space to record the song as a “great finale” if the intention was to combine Lift Every Voice and Sing with Allen's suite. Allen himself said that the voice of George Shirley, who interpreted the Black National Anthem , had the merit of being placed on its own CD. Possibly, however, it is the special kind of performance and the mood that justified the detachment of the piece, the author speculates that this unfortunately leads to the fact that certain listeners would not bother to put the second disc into the CD player slide to hear only one track.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Geri Allen, Liner Notes.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Review of Andrea Canter's album in Jazzpolice ( Memento of the original from November 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jazzpolice.com
  3. ^ Hi-fi news, Volume 52, Issues 1-5, 2006
  4. ↑ Review of Ken Dryden's album at Allmusic (English). Retrieved January 4, 2011.
  5. ↑ Terry Perkins: Record review in JazzTimes 2006
  6. ^ Woodrow Wilkins: Album review in All About Jazz
  7. ^ A b c Will Layman: Review of the album in Pop Matters