About
Reviews (2)
06 Nov, 2019
Bill Evans Alone
What to say? Another fine work of art by Bill Evans. I didn't know about this album until recently and as far as I know its his only one of completely unaccompanied playing. All his recordings have an intimate quality but none more than this. His liner-notes talk about making music alone when no-one is listening except himself and how this solitude represents by far the greatest proportion of his time as a musician and his deepest involvement with music. This album is an attempt to reflect, as far as possible, that aspect. Because I have spent so much time listening to him play with a rhythm section, and to two superb and well-crafted albums with Tony Bennett singing, on first hearing, it felt like there was something missing. Once I got over that, I would actually say the opposite. In its wistful way this 'Alone' album feels rather complete.
06 Nov, 2019
Johnny Griffin 1957
I was trying to figure out why I love this era of Jazz so much, and Monk's music in particular. At the same time why I am irritated by some of the contemporary music I hear. I came up with a couple of things. Monk's music is absolutely alive, all acoustic, and made collectively in real time in front of your ears and not really under anyones 'control'. There is a chaotic urgency in the extended improvised sections, each of which ends in a reassuringly predictable celebration of joyous return with each reprieve of the composition. In some ways this is a Johnny Griffin album, because he is the most musically exposed and challenged. One has the feeling that he is not absolutely sure what he is doing, though his saxophone playing is somehow all the better for any searching and faltering. My sense is that this recording has captured a musical authenticity, something temporal between the musicians at the time. Its a live album, the sound quality might have been better if it had been recorded a couple of years later, but its good enough to enjoy. People speak about the pleasure of music as if they were simply describing sensations in the ear. Like syrup for drinking with the ears. I think there is another aspect. This recording is 63 years old. Yet it still affords me the opportunity to marvel that anything so exuberant and strange should ever have come to pass. What a joy and sorry I cant go back.