What Record Are You Listening To Today?

ah yeah love this mood too ;… thks

Just came across this killer lineup. It’s labelled as “Autumn in New York,” but as one of the responders pointed out, it’s a medley of “Autumn Leaves / What’s New / Moonlight In Vermont. John Coltrane - tenor sax (on “What’s New”); Stan Getz - tenor sax (on “Moonlight In Vermont”); Wynton Kelly - piano (on “Autumn Leaves”); Paul Chambers - bass, Jimmy Cobb - drums.” Anyone know if there’s a recording of this session? Enjoy :musical_keyboard:

Some Misty then Stardust. I hope others enjoy this guy like I do.

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Hi @chris4, about the Ruby my dear,

I have never heard Garland’s version of the song, but here’s Barry Harris:

Have fun!

-Tuomo

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Brilliant, Tuomo! Thanks for sharing. Harris is truly a master.

I just started working through Tuomo’s transcription of “Naima.” I found this version from the Kassa Overall Trio that is really quite good. Overall is on drums, but the star, for me. is Theo Croker on trumpet. I saw him last year in a small venue, and he is incredible. He’s the grandson of Doc Cheatham, an acclaimed trumpet player. [Cheatham was old school (b. 1905), working with Cab Calloway in the 30’s and later with Latin bands like Perez Prado, In the 90’s he worked with Nicholas Payton and In 1998 received a Grammy posthumously for Best Jazz Solo.]

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love this the piano the trio the mood …

Great stuff - haven’t come across this pianist and trio before.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic to play like that :grinning:

Thanks Pierrot!

Brilliant find, Pierre. Just sweet! I hadn’t heard this before. Kikoski is quite good. He should be better known (although maybe he is, just not by me :sunglasses:). He has a version of this tune with Eric Alexander on sax on his Phoenix Rising (2019 Highnote). Their version of Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman” there is well worth a listen as well.

You also might like his Presage (1989 FREE LANCE) with Eddie Gomez and Al Foster. I’ve linked a couple of tunes: “Hope” and “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” a tune that I’ve always liked a lot. Enjoy! :musical_keyboard:

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Hogging the thread here, but this from the Esbjörn Svensson Trio (e.s.t.) is simply beautiful and well worth sharing. A Swedish piano player, who worked with Pat Metheny as well, died in 2008 in a scuba diving accident at 44. What a loss. All his albums are worth a listen, but Seven Days of Falling, recorded and released in 2003, is especially nice. “The album had the unusual distinction charting on both the top jazz and popular music albums charts”. All the players are quite good.

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This is the first E.S.T. tune that caught my ear.

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Thanks for sharing, keynut. That is nice. Hard to replicate that that plucking and strumming on the strings with an electric keyboard :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:. Viaticum is a great album.

A while back, I came across the brothers Enhco, David on trumpet and Thomas on piano. They’re “from a large family of [French] musicians and actors (the Casadesus family, of which they are part of the fifth generation).” They studied both classical and jazz, work with a wide range of groups, and occasionally come together, as you see in these videos: “Beatrice” and “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” which is especially nice. It makes for a very fine duo. Enjoy. :musical_keyboard:

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Thanks !! two beaufiful ballads and great interpretation … wonderful

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Here’s a very fine version of “But Beautiful” played by Hank Jones and Red Mitchel from Duo (1989 Timeless Records; released April 2000). Jones is truly one of the greats, and his conversation with Mitchel is brilliant… Enjoy. :musical_keyboard:

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I recently posted a tune from Jazzmeia Horn in the “Vocal Recordings” thread, and Hayden remarked, "I love the vocals and piano accompaniment on ‘The Peacocks.’” Thought I’d check out who’s playing the piano. It’s Victor Gould, raised in California and now working in New York. He has three albums out as a leader. His latest is Thoughts Become Things (2019 Victor Gould). Of this album, one critic noted:

There are talented composers and talented instrumentalists, and then there’s Victor Gould who happens to be both. On Thoughts Become Things, his third album as a leader, Gould presents complex arrangements written for horns and string quartets and multiple percussionists that display his compositional sophistication. Ultimately, though, it’s Gould’s own piano playing that is most affecting.

From that album, I’ve linked “Brand New” and “Thoughts Become Things.”

His second album is Clockwork (2016 Fresh Sound Records), from which I’ve included “Chaancé.” A review described it as “a mellow, strings-enhanced feature that puts the spotlight on Jeremy Pelt’s flugelhorn and the composer’s piano [and stands] apart in mood and musical complexion, marking Gould as a composer of great ambition and skill.”

Maybe a latter-day Strayhorn? Enjoy. :musical_keyboard:

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A few days ago, I came across one of the most beautiful solo piano albums I’ve heard in some time, Clare Fischer’s Alone Together. It was recorded in October 1975 and released in 1977 on the German label, MPS. It’s been through various re-releases since then. The cuts below are from a 2010 version from Advance Music.

I apologize in advance for the fairly lengthy bit that follows, but after hearing the album I had to find out where it came from, so I thought I’d share.

Following his Wiki blurb, Fischer

was an American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. . . . [who] went on to work with Donald Byrd and Dizzy Gillespie, and became known for his Latin and bossa nova recordings in the 1960s. He composed the Latin jazz standard “Morning”, and the jazz standard “Pensativa”. [H]e was nominated for eleven Grammy Awards during his lifetime, winning for his landmark album, 2+2 (1981), the first of Fischer’s records to incorporate the vocal ensemble writing developed during his Hi-Lo’s days into his already sizable Latin jazz discography. [I’ll cover his Latin side in a separate post later, looking at his use of the electric piano.]

He said, “I relate to everything. . . . I’m not just jazz, Latin, or classical. I really am a fusion of all of those, not today’s fusion, but my fusion."

His arranging work included Dizzie Gillespie, Cal Tjader, George Shearing, Diane Schuur, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan and Rufus, The Jacksons, Earl Klugh, Prince, Robert Palmer, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Spike Lee, João Gilberto, Paula Abdul and others. His arrangements for strings are truly a revelation.

Bill Dobbins says, “If I had to make a list of the ten most important solo jazz piano recordings of all time, [Alone Together] would definitely be on the list." By coinicidence, Tuomo wrote in response to the History of Solo Jazz videos that I recently posted, “I really recommend for all to check out Bill Dobbins better, not only he’s a great pianist and has excellent albums of his own, he is a true encyclopedia of Jazz music.” I’d never heard of him before, but came across him while looking for information about Fischer’s album. Tuomo’s comments lend weight to his remarks. And Dobbins also notes:

Fischer is still arguably the most harmonically sophisticated pianist and writer in jazz. His ability to combine elements of the blues and jazz traditions with such diverse influences as Ellington, Konitz, Shostakovitch and Stravinsky is truly phenomenal, particularly when the result is always fresh and personal, never academic or contrived. One of the more striking aspects of Fischer’s approach lies in the melodic beauty of the individual lines which create his harmonic textures. More than any jazz writer since Ellington, his approach to harmony seems to be based on the superimposition of independent lines rather than the predictable use of chord voicings in a purely vertical sense. This often results in a continuous feeling of strong forward motion, in which dissonances are rarely completely resolved.

Hayden mentions in his “How to Play Like” series that Herbie Hancock “studied harmony and voicings from the vocal group [Hi-Lo’s], arranged by pianist and composer Clare Fischer.” Hancock has said that “I wouldn’t be me without Clare Fischer.”

Here’s an interesting bit, especially if you know Kenny Werner’s Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within. Seems Fischer was of a like mind:

This recording was completed in Villingen in western Germany in the home of Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, the owner and recording engineer of MPS Records. In his living room he had a Steinway grand; a piano over nine feet long that has become legend on the western side of the Atlantic. “It is,” said Clare, “the most magnificent instrument I ever touched in my life. You couldn’t bang it. The harder you hit it, the more it produced. It was impossible to overplay it. I had a chance to play that instrument for six days. Hearing German spoken around me made me think of my father, who died in 1960, and whom I hadn’t thought much about in recent years. And I remembered what he meant to me. I played ‘Du, Du, liegst mir i’m Herzen,’ because my father used to sing it to me. So I sat there, playing that magnificent instrument, thinking of my father and weeping.” Clare was particularly emphatic about the importance of the emotional environment in which this album was made. He said, "Because I require love to do my absolute best, and because I had it there - the people were simply wonderful, lovely people - this album has something that no other album I’ve done has. “Performance level is always subconscious. In normal recording conditions, that red light, when it goes on, causes the conscious to intrude. But that did not happen in this album. Hans Georg wasn’t even in the room. The equipment was actually three floors above. That’s why this album has what the others do not; a totally unselfconscious performance.”

At any rate, here are a few of the tunes. Enjoy! :musical_keyboard: (The third tune cuts off abruptly at the end, but it’s still worth a listen.)

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Here’s a brilliant version of “In a Sentimental Mood” by Hank Jones. Seems to touch on many of the lessons here. Enjoy :musical_keyboard:

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Have started listening more to Oscar Peterson - then came across these videos and really liked his improvs & compositions :heart: in case these have not been shared yet :blush:

love the effects he used on this one :heart:

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just beautiful - I love this one :heart: Thanks for sharing! Scott