Charlie Haden & Hank Jones: Come Sunday (2012)

There’s something about bassist Charlie Haden’s woodsy tone that just sounds thick with history. Dark yet warm as the echoes that would fill the sort of rural chapel roughly sketched on the album’s cover, Haden’s latest outing reunites him with the late jazz piano legend Hank Jones in a collection of compact yet lushly rendered hymns and spirituals, many of which are linked with the civil rights movement.

Recorded shortly before Jones’ death in 2010 at 91 years old, “Come Sunday” is a sequel to the duo’s 1995 recording “Steal Away,” which also explored the vintage gospel and Americana close to both musicians’ hearts. Though in the past Haden has explored more avant-garde orbits with Ornette Coleman and his own Liberation Music Orchestra, both he and Jones treat these melodies with a deceptively spare reverence, allowing the songs room to breathe with their original sentiment while coloring them with a lovingly inventive elegance that takes the music somewhere new.

Following Jones’ sparkling lead through a swinging “Give Me That Old Time Religion,” Haden’s bass weaves with an improbable mix of gravity and grace, and Dvorak’s spiritual-tinged “Going Home” is a showcase for Jones’ piano to weave around Haden’s steady foundation, which remains as sure and rich as carved mahogany. A pair of Christmas carols in “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” give the recording a seasonal warmth, but in tribute to both a lost master and a music that has long celebrated peace and hope, this record can lift spirits any time of year.

Tracklist:
01. Take My Hand Precious Lord
02. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
03. Down By The Riverside
04. Going Home
05. Blessed Assurance
06. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
07. Bringing In The Sheaves
08. Deep River
09. Give Me That Old Time Religion
10. Sweet Hour Of Prayer
11. The Old Rugged Cross
12. Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?
13. Nearer My God To Thee
14. Come Sunday
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320K
Turbobit
Depositfiles

Konitz, Mehldau, Haden, Motian: Live at Birdland (2011)

The tunes are familiar, Great American Songbook and jazz standards all. So for those unfamiliar with the names involved in this quartet outing, the old complaint of “same old same old” could surface. But with alto saxophonist Lee Konitz at the top of the listing, “same old same old” gets rolled out the door. Konitz, with over 60 years of professional experience—from the 1949 Birth of the Cool (Capitol Records, 1957) sessions with arranger Gil Evans and trumpeter Miles Davis, to the present day—is one of the most distinctively original of jazz artists. His plaintive, ghostly cry opens the set on “Loverman.” The tune has been given stellar treatments by, most famously, singer Billie Holiday and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, and here it announces an uncommon listening experience to follow. Konitz’s alto saxophone tone is hollow and bitingly tart, with a hint of a growl scratching around the edges, an invitation to the spacious and thoughtful delicacy of Brad Mehldau’s piano, the whisper and scratch of Paul Motian’s drums, and the spare-but perfect placement of Charlie Haden’s bass notes.

Even the youngster in the line-up, Mehldau, has more than two decades of recording and performing in the resume; so when a group like this gets together for an impromptu session at New York’s Birdland—one of jazz’s most productive live recording venues—magic can happen, and it did this night. It’s not a magic of the look at me, virtuosic, fireworks variety, but one of a melding of four different and very experienced perspectives on some of those jazz tunes that seem—after all these years—to be coded in our DNA, the musicians becoming one on this outing, creating melodic mutations that give birth to new sonic entities, new species altogether, maybe even a new genus or two, recognizable, but very different from the original organisms while still exuding a quality of familiar beauty.

“Loverman,” the opener, and Sonny Rollins’ “Oleo” are in the new genus category. If taken in small doses on a casual or distracted listen, they can be unrecognizable in snippets, and seem like forarys into free jazz. In part, they may be. Konitz is especially loose in his interpretations, drifting and swirling around in a variety of melodic side eddies that drift at unexpected times—usually briefly—back into the mainstream flow.

“Lullaby of Birdland” and “I Fall In Love Too Easily” don’t stray so far from what might be called standard interpretations, though it seems Konitz is trying to do just that, leaving Melhdau more the keeper of the melody, a task the pianist takes on with uncommon aplomb and originality and, yes, freedom.

Miles Davis’ “Solar” is a tune that has managed to sound timeless for more than 50 years. Konitz staggers in here, with a rather harsh and stentorian tone, like a blaring shower singer, until four crisp alto notes, followed post-haste by the piano rolling with the same riff, announce the tune, and draw in the masterful wandering of Motian and Haden.

It’s the title of another of the set’s American Songbook tunes, “You Stepped Out of a Dream,” that describes the mood. In the hands of these seasoned musicians, this music has an often skewed and surreal, out of a dream quality. We’ve heard them before, but never quite like this, unfolding in a way that doesn’t quite make logical sense; revealing new and unexpected angles of their beauty.

Personnel:

Lee Konitz: alto saxophone
Brad Mehldau: piano
Charlie Haden: bass
Paul Motian: drums

Tracklist:

1. Lover Man
2. Lullaby of Birdland
3. Solar
4. I Fall in Love too Easily
5. You Stepped out of a Dream
6. Oleo

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320K

Hotfile

Fileserve