<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_41441">Quite a while ago, I was sent a CD by the bassist John Patitucci and friends for review.</div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46273">I could actually have seen them perform the material, I was in London when they were --</div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46274">but at a ticket price beyond my pocket!!! <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46275">In any event my brow wrinkled when I read another review.</div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46277">Its author spoke of an admirable jazz CD. I fear I include as jazz a lot more than do some worthy fellow-constituents, but I recall having denied that that was a jazz CD, before seeing anybody (other than trying to flog -- or marklet -- the thing) assert otherwise. <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46278">It was -- it is a collection of performances in genres ranging from Ibero-American to North American Protestant hymnody, to I suppose Ravel (I can mention him, because Jimmy McPartland once identified Ravel -- I think to Charles Fox -- as his hero) probably extracted or divorced from jazz practice and organised to match what was expected in such genres around the year 2001 or so. </div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46279"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Nice enough stuff, I thought and think, and with an appeal for some jazz enthusiasts, but short on some things. <br></div><div dir="ltr">There seems to have been a trend in that direction. <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46497">As a friend of mine once observed about Morris dancing, it doesn't however swing. <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46498">It wasn't, as I gather Beethoven said (in German) "unbuttoned". <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46496"><br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46485">Of course there is a lot of pre-jazz around on what was recorded before 1917, but it's at best borderline, and there is really no beginning date. <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46486">I suppose it has a lot to do with whether the singularity of messrs. Maestri Bechet and Armstrong rang bells in souls that could find implications to work out and work with <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46487"><br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46488">but I don't suppose promoters of the expert bassist's CD which I reviewed several years before yesterday would take "the latest things in pre-jazz" as a welcome sales-pitch! <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46489"><br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709768566_46490">Robert R. Calder<br></div></div></body></html>