Category: Music

George Benson & Al Jarreau – Givin’ It Up

Every so often I’ll get an email from On Target Media Group touting the newest project that they are running PR for. It usually has a link to some streaming files, and an offer to send a review copy if I’d like one. It is usually some sort of smooth jazz release. The first time I responded and told them that I don’t usually listen to or write about much smooth jazz, but if they had anything more adventuresome to send it my way.

I kept getting the emails, but nothing seemed more adventuresome, so I just ignored them. Then I got an email about the new CD by George Benson & Al Jarreau. I had seen some print and TV ads for it, and the concept stirred my curiousity. I had no plans to buy it, but if someone wanted to give me a copy I would certainly check it out.

cd cover

Al Jarreau was a big part of my journey into jazz as a teenager. The bass player at our school had older brothers that were into music, and much of their taste affected my early taste. This was the mid-80’s and Jarreau tunes like “Boogie Down” and “Morning” got a lot of play in my car cassette deck. They were catchy and had a groove that made my body want to move. I further explored the Jarreau catalogue and got back to the fine live album “Look to The Rainbow” which I found moving on multiple levels.

My listening moved further away from the mainstream, and Jarreau left my playlists for the most part. I was hoping this new CD would give me a great flash of mid-80’s Jarreau nostalgia, but it hasn’t really. Maybe my ears have just changed too much. Jarreau has always been slick and polished, but there was some fire up under the polish in the old days. This disc feels more calculated than passionate. The Jarreau I knew in my youth wouldn’t have done “Four” as a medium slow swing, it would have been a burner.

It really isn’t fair for me to review this disc, because I am not it’s target audience. The CD is well done. The production and musicianship are all first class. My tastes just don’t line up with the tastes of the producers of this disc. I don’t want to make it sound like the whole disc is bland muzak, it’s not. Only some of it is bland muzak. Some of it is good music.

Alex Rawls on definitive

In this week’s Pop Life column, Alex Rawls talks about definitive recordings.

offBeat :: Pop Life

Rob Wagner addressed this subject once when his “Lost Children” album was coming out. He talked about having a hard time getting excited about the CD not because he wasn’t happy with it, but because the recorded versions didn’t represent anything special to him. They weren’t the best versions of those compositions that he had ever performed, only the best of those performed at the session, and when he played those compositions in the future, they would never sound exactly like the album. In short, there wasn’t really anything authoritative about those versions, even though listeners tend to treat recorded versions of songs as THE versions.

This fits in with the Ken Vandermark championed idea that recordings aren’t particularly good ways to experience a band. Hearing improvisers regularly over a period of time is a much better way to understand the essence and progression of a group’s music.

Dave Douglas is using technology to get closer to this ideal.

Just outside

Brian Olewnick has some interesting thoughts about writing about friends and acquaintances.

Just outside

That said….I can’t deny that my perceptions of someone’s music is often biased to one degree or another by either what I think of them personally or, if I don’t actually know them, by what impression their (perceived) personality has made on me. It can work both ways.

Dave Douglas on M-Base 12 tone style

Greenleaf Music

One thing I didn’t do was ask the players in the group to “improvise twelve tone style.” I think improvisation is about freedom in context so I wouldn’t presume to tell them how to play, I would only create the context in which it could happen.

Too much theory can be deadening. But in my own playing I found the theory useful as a launching pad for escaping the hegemony of the tonic.

I love the way DD is able to express himself in words as it relates to his music. “Too much theory can be deadening.” I like that concept, especially if you follow it through to the idea that “too much” can be a different amount for each musician. What is too much for me, might not be even close to enough for some of my saxophonist friends. Find your own balance.

Ben Allison – Cowboy Justice

I have a few Ben Allison albums that I like, so when I saw Cowboy Justice on eMusic, it was a no-brainer to click the download button.

cowboy justice

I’ve given this a couple of listens, and I am really digging it. The compositions are good, and the grooves feel great, but the one thing that has really grabbed me on this album is the playing of trumpeter Ron Horton. I have heard his name before, but to my knowledge I hadn’t heard him play. I’m glad I am getting to hear him on this album. He sounds great.

Rick Parker Collective

I just picked up two CDs from the Rick Parker Collective.

finding space


ny gravity

Finding Space is the newer of the two CDs. Both feature good compositions in the modern New York style: interesting harmonies, nice grooves, attention to the arrangements. Listening to them side by side is an interesting experience, because you can hear several years of evolution. New York Gravity was recorded within the first year after Rick moved to NY and you can hear that fresh young energy in it. I hear that energy change on the later CD. I don’t want to say it turns cynical, but it definitely changes.

Of course that could all be projected by me. That’s what I get for reading the liner notes. You might hear it differently, and I am sure it was meant differently by the artists, but that’s some of what I hear between the two discs.

Both discs are good. Check them out.

DJA on rhythm

In this performance review,Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society: Steve Reich @ The Whitney, 15 Oct 2006 (Alarm Will Sound, So Percussion, etc), Darcy exhibits how deeply he gets it.

…at the time Reich first started presenting his music, few classically trained players were capable of dealing with its demands. It’s not that the music is flashy and virtuosic — just the opposite. But it requires (and I’m sorry to keep harping on this, but it’s important) rhythmic authority. Rhythmic authority isn’t just the ability to play rhythms precisely, although unfortunately, many classical players aren’t even equipped for that. Reich’s music is only playable if everyone has a rock-solid internal click track going, as well as the ability to both lock in with the ensemble and — when necessary — slip off the grid while still maintaining rigorous control over your own tempo. And that’s just to get through the music on a basic level. For the pieces to come alive, for the music to draw the listeners in instead of just sitting there, flat and sterile, you need to have an emotional connection to rhythm. You need to understand viscerally, in your gut, what a short note on the “and” of one means, and how it’s different from the same note in a different part of the bar. You need to have an intuitive sense of how tiny differences in emphasis and placement can drastically affect the character of a syncopated or repeated figure. In other words, you must be able to groove.