Jazz – Page 12 – musicophilesblog – From Keith Jarrett to Johannes Brahms

My Top 5 Vocal Jazz Albums of 2015

Following my recent post on my top Classical albums of 2015, let me now follow up with my top 5 Vocal Jazz albums for this year.

Note there are a couple of “only” four star albums here, which means I don’t consider them absolutely essential. That said, I very much like all of the below and would recommend them without hesitation.

Cecile McLorin Salvant: For One To Love (Mack Avenue 2015)

Cecile McLorin Salvant For One To Love MackAvenue 2015

My Jazz album of the year by an outstanding young talent (review here). I’ve seen her live and this was probably one of my best concerts of the year .

Sarah McKenzie: We Could Be Lovers (Impulse 2015)

Sarah McKenzie We Could Be Lovers Impulse 2015

Sarah McKenzie is my other discovery of this year (reviewed here). Less innovative than Cecile McLorin Salvant, she does just old fashioned 1960-style vocal jazz. The thing is, she does it with so much charm and also includes her own originals, I’m convinced we’ll continue hearing from this young artist.

If you can catch her live as I did (see here), go for it, she’s even better live than on this album.

Cassandra Wilson: Coming Forth By Day (Legacy Records 2015)

Cassandra Wilson Coming Forth By Day 2015

I’ve said it before, I have a love-hate relationship with Cassandra Wilson. Quite often, she just gets too close to a style that I just don’t like. On this Billie Holiday album, all is well from my perspective (see my review here).

Melody Gardot: Currency of Man (Universal 2015)

Melody Gardot - Currency of Man

To be fair, this is more Soul than Jazz, but in any case, I really like this album. See my review here.

Autour de Nina (Verve 2015)

Autour de Nina Verve Compilation Sophie Hunger Melody Gardot

A beautiful Nina Simone Tribute album from a variety of artists. One of my favorite vocal jazz albums of the year, reviewed here.

My Top 5 Christmas Jazz Albums

After my previous post on the Christmas Oratorio, I thought let’s continue the seasonal music a bit more, but expand to Jazz.

Warning: Cheesy Music Ahead!

Yes, obviously, non-classical Christmas music usually is rather cheesy. If you take it to the extremes, it can feel like a bit too much.

But let’s face it, isn’t this the time for “a bit too much”?

The trick is to find the albums that are still giving you the Christmas feel without completely overdoing it. I’ve looked around quite a bit and found 5 albums that are certainly a bit kitsch, but you (or at least I) can listen to an entire album without the feeling of just too much sugar.

Holly Cole: Baby, It’s Cold Outside (Alert Records 2001)

Holly Cole Baby It's Cold Outside

I’m actually surprised I haven’t mentioned Holly on my blog yet, as I like her music very much. She’s located somewhere between Jazz and Pop/Singer Songwriter, and I really like her voice.

My favorite song on this album is the track that is probably given you the least holiday spirit, a cover of Merle Haggard’s If We Make It Through December. You can see from this song already that this is not your typical Christmas album.

Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas (Verve 1960)

0004400650862_600

OK, not a lot of kitsch here, but one of the fastest versions of Jingle Bells ever (OK, not as fast as Barbara Streisand here, but still pretty fast). The track selection is a little bit more classical than Holly Cole, so you get all your Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer, Let It Snow, and Winter Wonderlands, but with the usual charm and swing of Ella’s beautiful voice.

Diana Krall: Christmas Songs (Verve 2005)

Diana Krall Christmas Songs Verve

This is actually already the second Christmas album by Mrs Krall, the first one is a 1999 EP called Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

Diana Krall’s voice is just perfect for Christmas songs, and the not too overloaded Clayton/Hamilton Orchestra is doing a great job here (although poor drummer Jeff Hamilton probably get’s a bit bored here). OK, you get your occasional dose if strings, but they don’t dominate the album too much.

My favorite song on this album is Winter Wonderland, which has a beautiful swing to it.

Emilie-Claire Barlow: Winter Wonderland (Victor 2006)

Emilie-Claire Barlow doesn’t have the same near celebrity status as her fellow Canadian Diana Krall, but she’s also a very fine singer. She has a very particular tone, much brighter than all the other singers listed above, if you’ve heard her once, you’ll recognize her immediately.

One particularity of this album is that she turns Sleigh Ride into a Samba.

Emilie-Claire Barlow Winter Wonderland

Vince Guaraldi: A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy 1965)

And given that I’m a fan of the Jazz Piano Trio, a non-vocal classic had to be on this list. You’ve never heard O Tannenbaum (O Christmas Tree) swinging better!

Vince Guaraldi A Charlie Brown Christmas

You can find the albums above here:

Holly Cole (ProStudimasters)

Ella Fitzgerald (Qobuz)

Diana Krall (Qobuz)

Emily-Claire Barlow (HDtracks)

Vince Guaraldi (Acoustic Sounds)

Montreux Alexander Live!

Monty Alexander

For whatever reason, although I really like piano trios as every regular reader of my blog will have understood by now, Monty Alexander flew under the radar screen for me until rather recently

Luckily, some other music lovers pointed me to him, and the trigger for purchasing this particular album was fellow Jazz addict JoeWhip’s entry to Audiostream’s Lovely Recordings, a new feature on the site: (The rest of his list is also very much worth exploring, I had a bit more than half of it already and purchased most of the rest after reading the list).

Montreux Alexander Live! (MPS 1985/2014)

Montreux Alexander - The Monty Alexander Trio Live! At The Montreux Festival MPS

What a nice recommendation!

Live albums often are either really good or really dull. The dull ones often just try to hard, or don’t really capture the spirit and feeling of the concert and leave you uninvolved. The good ones are just the opposite.

Luckily, the latter applies here, you feel like you’re actually sitting in the concert and the groove get’s you immediately.

Jeff Hamilton is a great asset obviously, his ability to make any kind of music swing is just outstanding (he also plays, in a very similar style on Ray Brown Live At the Loa, one of my 25 Essential Jazz albums).

John Clayton is not that well known, but he is a Ray Brown pupil and you can hear it.

I can only agree with JoeWhip on his assessment that this is music that will make you smile no matter how down you are.

Recommended.

My rating: 4 stars

You can find it here (Qobuz)

Easy Living: My Favorite Enrico Rava Album

Enrico Rava

In my previous post on Enrico Pieranunzi I was asked about other Italian artists I like, and José in his comment listed among others Enrico Rava. This is what triggered this blog post.

Well, first of all, my initial answer is that Rava has a beautiful sound, a very soft, dreamy voice, that I really like.

With regards to his recorded albums, I’m more torn, as I don’t have a single album with Rava in the lead of which I love every single track. I’ll explain further below why.

That said, without doubt Rava is one of the leading figures of the Italian Jazz scene.

I have about 10 albums of Rava in my collection, and would like to present here what overall is my favorite Rava album: Easy Living

Easy Living (ECM 2003)

Why this particular album?

Well, first of all, Easy Living is one of my favorite standards (I originally fell in love with Sarah Vaughan singing it). And Rava does a gorgeous version of this song here.

Enrico Rava Easy Living ECM 2003

Second, Stefano Bollani.

I’ve previously written about him and how much I appreciate his piano playing, and he’s also one of the factors why I particularly appreciate this album. Take his solo on track 8, Hornette and the Drum Things and you’ll understand why.

Track 1, Chromosomi, is already a great start. It sets the scene for an album that is generally meditative, dreamy, perfect for a lazy Sunday morning like this one (as I write it, it has started to snow outside, and this song sounds like the perfect soundtrack for watching the falling snowflakes).

Now to explain, as already mentioned above, what I don’t like about certain Rava songs, let’s take the example of Traveling Night (track 7). I’ve written time and time over again, how much I need melodies. My brain is just wired that way.

I actually like Rosario Bonaccorso’s bass solo, and then Roberto Gatto and Stefano chiming in the same mood. But then I get lost in rhythmic and harmony changes, and my little brain never finds its way out again, it just feels to random.

I’ve had this discussion with Jazz musicians, and for some of them, when it gets more random and adventurous, this is when music really starts getting interesting, for some others, this is when it starts to lose interest. I’m not arguing quality here, but just personal preference.

One special thing to mention on this album is the beautiful complementarity between Rava and Gianluca Petrella on trombone.

This album is recorded by ECM, and therefore, as usual, the recording quality is really good.

My rating: 4 stars

You can find it here (Qobuz)

3 Hours Of Timeless Beauty – Keith Jarrett Bregenz München

What do Bregenz and Munich have in common? Not a lot on paper, the nice Austrian town on Lake Constance and the Bavarian capital, in spite of the fact that they are only about 2h away from each other by car.

So why bother writing about them here? Well, you’ll have guessed it already, Keith Jarrett gave one of his famous solo concerts in both places.

And as promised previously, I plan to eventually review all the Jarrett solo concert recordings (fun fact, it’s been nearly 6 month ago that I attended one myself for the first time and started this blog, see my post here)

Bregenz München (ECM 1981/2013)

These recordings date from 1981, i.e. 6 years after the famous Köln Concert. Jarrett by then had developed a clear style for his concerts, and these recordings show that he developed already a certain maturity.

Keith Jarrett Concerts Bregenz München ECM

Bregenz comes first: Part 1 starts swinging, with nearly a ragtime feel occasionally. After 10 minutes he slows down, into a more melancholic mood.

I just love the flowing passage around 15:00, that turns much heavier around 17:30. At around 19 he become more rhythmic, using the piano’s body regularly as percussion.

Part II keeps the rhythm, driven by the left hand, and the percussion elements. All this at a faster pace. At some time we even get Calypso elements.

Bregenz Heartland is one of my favorites on this album. As said before I’m a sucker for melodies. And luckily Jarrett on his encores nearly always delivers.

And the good news is: Munich gets even better. This concert is longer, in 4 parts, and 2 encores, including another one title Heartland, again astonishingly beautiful. I’m going to spare you a more detailed description, you get that I like it very much.

Keith Jarrett has a long history of playing classical music, and you can hear it here.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable album and very much worth having.

My rating: 4 stars (compared to the very high standards of Jarrett’s solo concerts, actually I’m on the edge of giving this 5 stars, and may revisit my rating after formally reviewing more of his solo albums, but so far, I’d probably still prefer Köln, Bremen Lausanne, and Sun Bear).

You can find it here (Highresaudio) or here (HDtracks)

Gentle Ben – Ben Webster & Tete Montoliu

Finally writing about Jazz again

I’ve been a bit disappointed by the Jazz releases of the recent months, I’ve been checking out pretty much every new album on my streaming service, but there weren’t a lot of new albums that raised my curiosity.

So let’s go back to the classics and talk about two not very well-known artists that both were outstanding musicians.

Ben Webster

If you ask Jazz fans about well-known Sax players, you get Bird, Rollins, Coltrane. Does anybody mention Webster? Yes, when you ask them, but he’s clearly not top of mind.

This is really a pity. He has a very unique sound, full, with a lot of “air”. I’m not usually very good at identifying saxophone players at their sound, but Webster is very easily recognizable.

He is as much at ease in uptempo as he is in beautiful ballads.

I could have mentioned several Ben Webster albums here, e.g. Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson, Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster, or Soulville, all classic Verve albums from the late 1950s.

However, I’ve chosen another one, recorded in 1973, one of his very last albums. Why?

Tete Montoliu

Well, to allow me to write about Tete Montoliu, another not as well-known musician, from Barcelona. No idea why this excellent piano player didn’t become more famous? Maybe because his main career was in the 1970s, when everybody was listening to Fusion?

Gentle Ben

Ben Webster Tete Montoliu Trio Gentle Ben

Whatever the reasons were, this album is proof that both artists were outstanding musicians.

Take the starter track, Ben’s Blues. 9 minutes of pure concentrated swing.

The Man I Love is one of my favorite Jazz ballads. I’ve rarely heard it better played than here. You really can hear Billie Holiday in his saxophone voice.

Or Don’t Blame Me, another beautiful slow ballad, where you get all the nuances of Websters amazing sound.

This album really is a lot of fun all the way.

My rating: 4 stars

You can still download it here (Qobuz), unfortunately, my favorite download and streaming provider seems to be in major financial trouble and may not be around any more in the near future, which would be a pity.

Keith Jarrett: La Scala

Keith Jarrett’s Live Albums

Keith Jarrett and his solo piano concerts are legendary.

If Wikipedia is to be trusted, his Köln Concert is the best-selling solo and piano album in the history, with more than 3.5M albums sold. This may not be much by Taylor Swift standards, but for Jazz, where albums usually selling a some thousands of albums, this number is just mind-boggling.

And what is probably even more mind-boggling is that the Köln Concert is not a one hit wonder, but Jarrett has turned out dozens of solo concert albums in the last thirty years, and usually nearly all of them are worth having.

I’ve started this blog writing about the lucky chance I had to see Jarrett live earlier this year, and it is truly an outstanding experience.

In my 25 Essential Jazz albums post, I’ve promised to myself that I’ll eventually review all of his live solo albums.

This will be a challenging task, but well, you’ve got to have ambitions in life. Let’s see how long this journey is going to take.

La Scala (ECM 1997)

Every journey has got to start somewhere. I rather randomly chose La Scala for a start. Why? Well, the cover is beautiful, and it is probably one of the lesser known albums.

La Scala was recorded (you would have guessed) in Milan’s famous opera house, in 1995, and released in 1997. Apparently, this is the first time a solo jazz concert was hosted in these illustrious walls.

The formal structure of the concert is very simple, you have “Part I” (approx 45 min) and Part II, adding 28 more minutes.

Part I evolves very slowly over time. it reminds me of a large river maeandering slowly and majestically. You have time to let your mind wander around while listening to this. In a way, this nearly becomes meditation music, but this is Jarrett, so you can rest assured that you won’t get bored, instead you just keep floating with the river.

Part II starts a bit randomly. This is the style I personally don’t really like that much, I just get lost without a clear melody and rhythm. Well luckily for me he doesn’t overdo the randomness, and structure reemerges rather quickly after around 4 minutes or so. Unlike part I, this part has some much faster flows, and while part I was focused on chords, here you often just get a chain of individual notes. Around 10 min in, the character changes again, chords reappear, and a melodic structure reemerges.

And in my personal opinion, he’s really saving the best for last. The encore is “Over the Rainbow”, in a very simple, minimalistic approach. I’ve mentioned previously how much I love this song, and I’m not disappointed here either.

My rating: 4 stars (not the most essential of Jarrett’s solo albums, but we’re really talking from a very high standard here, this is still better than 95% of other solo piano albums out there).

You can download it here (Qobuz) or here (HDTracks)

Cecile McLorin Salvant: For One To Love (Mack Avenue 2015)

Sarah McKenzie: We Could Be Lovers (Impulse 2015)

Cassandra Wilson: Coming Forth By Day (Legacy Records 2015)

Melody Gardot: Currency of Man (Universal 2015)

Autour de Nina (Verve 2015)

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Warning: Cheesy Music Ahead!

Holly Cole: Baby, It’s Cold Outside (Alert Records 2001)

Diana Krall: Christmas Songs (Verve 2005)

Emilie-Claire Barlow: Winter Wonderland (Victor 2006)

Vince Guaraldi: A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy 1965)

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Monty Alexander

Montreux Alexander Live! (MPS 1985/2014)

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Enrico Rava

Easy Living (ECM 2003)

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Bregenz München (ECM 1981/2013)

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Finally writing about Jazz again

Ben Webster

Gentle Ben

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La Scala (ECM 1997)

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