[Dixielandjazz] Some Pianist CD Reviews from NY TIMES

[Steve barbone]

Some interesting points by Mr. Ratliff which pianists on the list will
enjoy. Plus us oldsters who appreciate Hank Jones who just keeps on ticking.
Some OKOM content, some not, but all "Jazz".

Mulgrew Miller? Well read Ratliff's comment about What Jazz requires in the
third paragraph from the end. The very definition of OKOM?

Makes one want to go out and buy Mulgrew's CD. :-) VBG.

Cheers,
Sreve Barbone


Critic's Choice By BEN RATLIFF
Published: May 30, 2005 - NY TIMES

Jazz pianists have been the great group-oriented thinkers of the genre, and
more truth of what the jazz tradition really is (as opposed to where it's
going, which is another question) lies in the piano-bass-drums trio than in
any other kind of jazz group. These three pianists have helped determine the
language of mainstream jazz since the late 1940's. Though each of their
groups sounds different, these records don't announce their singularity;
they don't come wrapped in a concept. The music arrives as part of a larger
entity, the consensual, slowly evolved language of postwar jazz. Still,
listen closely: amid the striations of history, the individual craftsmanship
is obvious. 

Hank Jones is 86, and at that age many musicians have stopped working, or at
least are sticking with a sealed-off commitment to their own corners of
history. But Mr. Jones - the last surviving brother of the three great
Joneses in jazz, including the drummer Elvin and the trumpeter Thad - is
doing what we might unreasonably hope from him: he is collecting everything
he has learned and still refining his style.

During the last year Mr. Jones has released two final recordings from his
Great Jazz Trio with Elvin, who died a year ago, and two albums with the
saxophonist Joe Lovano. "For My Father" (Justin Time) is the remarkable new
record by his regular trio, with the bassist George Mraz and drummer Dennis
Mackrel. 

Mr. Jones arrived in the time of bebop, but his principal influences come
from a slightly earlier time: Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. He never became
part of a stylistic school, not even the bop that surrounded him in the
1940's and 50's. He is a priest of moderation, delivering clean ideas with
symmetrical clarity, breezing through harmonic motions that feel fresh and
complete; he can play fast and quietly, which is one of the most beguiling
tricks a jazz musician can unleash.

This combination of humility and constant searching extends all the way
through "For My Father." Even rarer at his age, Mr. Jones is still invested
in enlarging the scope of standards in jazz, and this album includes
rearranged versions of well-known songs, as well as more recent pieces by
players who are less well known as composers, like Harold Mabern, James
Black and Tom Harrell.

This is obviously a record made by an older man: on some songs, the tempos
are too slow for most younger musicians to inhabit fully. ("Bemsha Swing,"
written by Denzil Best and Thelonious Monk, is one example; Billy
Strayhorn's "Johnny Come Lately" is another. And there is a stunning version
of Milt Jackson's "SKJ" taken at a crawl.) Tempo is just another area in
which Mr. Jones quietly asserts himself: he makes moderation beautiful, and
a bit mysterious.

After Fajr
Ahmad Jamal

The jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal knows how to get attention and reaction, and he
has been tightening his rhetoric for more than 50 years.

But the experience has grown more complicated. At the peak of his
popularity, in the late 1950's, his trio played so precisely that its
musicians sounded as if they were wired together, and Mr. Jamal kept veering
between roars and pitter-patters; while other pianists drove percussively
through complicated chord changes - which somehow seemed more honest and
authentic at the time - he was criticized for sounding mannered.

Mr. Jamal's playing has become more idiosyncratic and tumultuous. His new
album, "After Fajr" (Dreyfus), recorded live with his trio in France last
year, is one of his best.

The standard "Time on My Hands," from the new record, describes how his old
style has evolved. Mr. Jamal likes to play gentle, perfumed melodies as
single notes in the high register of the keyboard. But then he balances them
with darker, authoritative ringing tones from the lower end; he drawls and
withdraws almost to the point of disappearing, then returns like a
bulldozer, playing in a jacked-up, dislocating style. His music can be pushy
and imperious, and he doesn't parse down to a recognizable aesthetic
profile. 

In his own pieces, like "Manhattan Reflections," Mr. Jamal likes to use
simple melodies, funk rhythms and vamps; his band, with the bassist James
Cammack and the identifiably New Orleans-reared drummer Idris Muhammad, can
keep them sounding fresh for a long time under his solos while he unleashes
his supply of short and fascinating diversions.


Live at Yoshi's, Vol. 2
Mulgrew Miller

When people complain that very young and very old jazz musicians are noticed
but the middle-age ones are ignored, they are usually talking about Mulgrew
Miller, who played sideman to Woody Shaw and Art Blakey, among others, until
emerging as a bandleader in the mid-1980's. An extraordinary amount of solid
respect - as opposed to envy, competition, worship or bafflement - goes in
his direction from other musicians.

This is partly because Mr. Miller has not backed down: an excellent pianist,
he has continued his faith in jazz as an exalted hybrid form, a discipline
that requires you to know modern classical harmony, to be good at
improvising in counterpoint, to know the best of American popular music and
to use the blues language in equal measure. It is anticonceptual art; it is
using what's there.

"Live at Yoshi's, Vol. 2" (Max Jazz), recorded with his trio, including the
bassist Derrick Hodge and the drummer Karriem Riggins, shows Mr. Miller at
his strongest, manufacturing more momentum than his handful of studio albums
suggest. (The equally strong first volume came out last year.)

Mr. Miller doesn't leave a lot of open space, and he pours common language
into his improvisations: you will hear many of the patterns that pianists
(and other instrumentalists) have considered hip since the late 1950's. He
is not a schemer; except for the solo ballad "It's Easy to Remember," his
playing is bluesier and more consistently voluble than Mr. Jones's and Mr.
Jamal's. Like Mr. Jamal, though, Mr. Miller loves the time-stopping feeling
of ostinatos: in his piece "One's Own Room," he uses them as jumping-off
points for a much more intuitive, open-ended kind of soloing.