Jeremy Monteiro / Jay Anderson / Lewis Nash - Live At No Black Tie (Kuala Lumpur) April 23, 2021 on JazzNote Records

SINGAPORE PIANIST JEREMY MONTEIRO TEAMS WITH AMERICAN JAZZ GREATS

JAY ANDERSON AND LEWIS NASH FOR NEW CD

LIVE AT NO BLACK TIE

COMING APRIL 23, 2021 FROM JAZZ NOTE RECORDS

Pianist JEREMY MONTEIRO considers himself a very fortunate man. Renowned as one of the premier jazz pianists in Singapore, he is presently entering the 45th year of a career spanning concerts, education, and music administration. He has played and recorded with many of the world’s greatest jazz artists, including James Moody, Benny Golson, Michael Brecker, Bobby McFerrin, Randy Brecker, Lee Ritenour, Herbie Mann, Paulinho DaCosta, Ernie Watts, Charlie Haden, Terumasa Hino, Al Foster, Carmen Bradford, and Toots Thielemans.

In the 1980s, Monteiro formed a partnership with the legendary bass/drum team of Eldee Young and Redd Holt, who had earlier worked as two-thirds of the Ramsey Lewis Trio. One night in 1986, Claude Nobs, the producer of the Montreux Jazz Festival stopped for dinner at a restaurant in Singapore, and heard a recording on the overhead speakers. Nobs asked who was playing, and when he was told it was Monteiro, Young and Holt, Nobs called the pianist and offered him the opportunity to play on the main stage in the 1988 festival, provided he could bring Young and Holt. Monteiro came through, and the resulting live album marked a milestone in the young pianist’s career.

Thirty-five years since that historic concert, Monteiro’s latest album LIVE AT NO BLACK TIE finds the pianist at the helm of another all-star trio. Bassist JAY ANDERSON and drummer LEWIS NASH rank among New York City’s most in-demand jazz musicians, but Monteiro did not come to New York to record with them; rather, it was Anderson and Nash who made the trip to Kuala Lampur to work and record with Monteiro. LIVE AT NO BLACK TIE was recorded and mixed by exceptional sound engineer Sunil Kumar in Kuala Lumpur and mastered by Klaus Endel in Germany.

The opening track, Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way,” is a song that Monteiro returns to every three or four years. The new edition begins with it a mysterious introduction which gives no hint of the Brubeck melody. All three musicians take part in this prelude, with Monteiro’s rubato improvisation answered by Anderson’s rich tones and Nash’s glimmering cymbals. Once the melody has appeared and gone, Monteiro, Anderson and Nash subtly interact with each other, propelling Monteiro into an ecstatic improvisation which reveals his diverse influences, including Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner, Chick Corea, and Keith Jarrett.

A swift-paced “Just in Time” follows, with all three musicians providing solos which offer an admirable contrast with each other, while supplying powerful musical content. Duke Ellington meets Erroll Garner in the opening chorus of “Prelude to a Kiss,” but after Anderson’s dramatic bass solo, Monteiro returns with a conception which subtly changes the scope of the arrangement. “Mode for Love” is Monteiro’s tribute to James Moody.

Late in his career, Moody experimented with inverting some of the modes used by John Coltrane. Monteiro was duly impressed with Moody’s discoveries and commemorated them with this tune, the title of which puns on Moody’s famous solo on “Moody’s Mood for Love.” As Monteiro readily admits, the modally-based composition doesn’t resemble Moody’s bebop, but the inspiration clearly rests with the spirit of the iconic saxophonist.

The wistfully melodic original, “Josefina” is dedicated to Monteiro’s wife. Anderson shows his respect to the composer and his subject by using the song’s arching main phrase as the primary building block of his solo. “Mount Olive” is also a dedication, this time to Eldee Young and Redd Holt, who dragged a tired Monteiro out of bed early one Sunday morning to attend a black congregational church. The overwhelming spirit of the music never left Monteiro, and the trio brings the sanctified spirit from the south side of Chicago to downtown Kuala Lampur. The last piece in this set of dedications is “Life Goes On,” a heartfelt tribute composed shortly after the death of Monteiro’s father. Monteiro—whose style was once described as “Ravel meets the blues”—displays both impressionistic and soulful ideas in his emotionally overwhelming improvisation.

“Monk in the Mountain,” co-composed by Monteiro and Hong Kong guitarist Eugene Pao, has nothing to do with Thelonious Monk. It celebrates an American man who gave up all of his worldly possessions to become a Buddhist monk to live in seclusion amidst nature. The trio gives this modally-based original an energetic workout, with Nash’s beat patterns and Anderson’s inquisitive counterpoint providing the necessary fuel to lift Monteiro to great creative heights. The passion which Monteiro injects into his solo jumps from the stereo speakers into the listener’s soul, and one can only imagine the excitement that this performance generated within the nightclub. The trio rides on that groove for the album closer, Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man.”

Monteiro has received many awards and honors in his career, including the coveted Cultural Medallion (the highest artistic recognition available in Singapore), two literary awards from the Golden Door Awards (for his memoir, Late-Night Thoughts of a Jazz Musician), and a Silver Medal for Best Music Score from the International Radio Festival in New York for his original composition, “Overture in C Major: The Story of Singapore.” Live at the No Black Tie is his 45th jazz album, and Monteiro hopes to reissue several of his older albums on his own label within the next few years. As is appropriate for a very fortunate and talented musician.

THOMAS CUNNIFFE is the publisher, editor and principal writer of www.jazzhistoryonline.com

1. In Your Own Sweet Way 12:07

2. Just in Time 7:09

3. Prelude to a Kiss 9:14

4. Mode for Love (for James Moody) 7:47

5. Josefina 6:31

6. Mount Olive (for Eldee Young & Redd Holt) 9:11

7. Life Goes On 6:56

8. Monk in the Mountain 12:20

9. Watermelon Man 7:18

Jeremy Monteiro Website

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Ethan Iverson - Bud Powell In The 21st Century (2021 Sunnyside Records)

The effects of the bebop revolution in jazz music are still being felt and explored. Of the half dozen true pioneers of the movement, pianist Bud Powell has remained somewhat in the shadows, although his work has become a major touchstone for true devotees of the music and a principal influence for most of jazz’s most explorative pianists.

Powell’s brilliant original compositions are essential, infinitely listenable but also strangely tricky. Unlike Monk, Parker and Gillespie, the composer neglected to perform them much after their original recordings, so they never became a part of the jazz lingua franca. Pianist and historian Ethan Iverson provides a fantastic validation of Powell’s compositional genius on his new recording, Bud Powell In The 21st Century, a reworking of a number of Powell’s pieces for big band.

Iverson came upon Powell’s music early in his development via the Mosaic boxed set of the complete Powell on Blue Note Records and the essential The Genius of Bud Powell compilation on Verve Records. The music was revelatory for Iverson and has continued to be an inspiration well into his career. That career has always balanced itself between the presentation of new contemporary work and jazz history, essentially Iverson’s involvement with The Bad Plus paired with his work on Do The Math.

After his departure from The Bad Plus, Iverson’s time has been occupied more and more with large commissions, like curating MONK@100, the Monk Centennial event at Duke University, Iverson’s overview of the British jazz scene for the London Jazz Festival, a piano concerto for the American Composers Orchestra, and Pepperland for the Mark Morris Dance Group. It was under the auspices of a commission from Carlo Pagnotta, Enzo Capua and the Umbria Jazz Festival that Iverson’s Powell project was able to take shape.

The popular pull of tribute concerts in jazz institutions has continued to surge, a common draw at Jazz at Lincoln Center and jazz festivals all over the world. Iverson believes fresh creative composition to be almost a requirement for jazz repertory projects to be successful. The project shaped itself into what would be Iverson’s first attempt at arranging for big band; to be presented at the Umbria Jazz Festival in 2019.

For source material, Iverson began toward four quintet pieces that Powell recorded with an incredible group of musicians in 1949. The ensemble of Powell, saxophonist Sonny Rollins, trumpeter Fats Navarro, bassist Tommy Potter and drummer Roy Haynes plays quintessential versions of Powell’s “Bouncing with Bud,” “Dance of The Infidels” and “Wail,” along with Monk’s “52nd Street Theme.” Because this is the only Powell led session with horns, Iverson decided to use these tunes as the backbone of his orchestrations.

Iverson is generally attracted to more idiosyncratic jazz composers who write for their ensembles, individuals like Duke Ellington and Carla Bley. In an effort to bridge a divide that would come from composing and arranging for a one-off big band, Iverson enlisted a tremendous quintet to secure the foundation of his work. Ingrid Jensen had impressed Iverson for years as a triumphant solo voice in Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society Band. Saxophonist Dayna Stephens stood apart for his virtuosity and oblique approach. Bassist Ben Street has been a longtime collaborator, someone who understands both bebop and modernity. The happy opportunity to add drummer Lewis Nash, a master musician who has been the first call of many legends, was too good for Iverson to pass up.

Going into the actual writing and arranging, Iverson knew that he wanted to present Powell’s compositions accurately, doing “no harm” to their original intention. This would be difficult, as the pieces are hard and have finicky details. There were a number of composers and arrangers Iverson looked to for inspiration, including Stravinsky’s arranging of older Italian music and Carla Bley’s take on Spanish folk songs for Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra. Shades of Count Basie and the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band also tint Iverson’s palette.

Iverson’s composed original pieces, like “Bud Powell in the 21st Century” and “Nobile Paradiso,” use Powell’s improvisations as building blocks. Iverson also borrows key harmonic and melodic ideas to inform his “Spells,” short chorales that connect the larger pieces and have the feel of an eerie séance with the celebrated pianist. Pieces like “Continuity” and “Nobile Paradiso” are heightened by Iverson’s mastery of counterpoint, with strands of ideas moving around each other, the latter piece composed of Iverson’s original material that builds like an anthemic Powell composition, like a hill from a grain of sand (with a foxtrot rhythm!). Big moving block chords hammer in the harmonic ingenuity of Powell’s originals under Iverson’s dynamic revisions.

Powell’s touch can be heard throughout the recording. Iverson and other ensemble members quote the pianist’s solo lines throughout, as can be heard in the saxophone section on “Celia” and under Iverson’s capable fingers on “Tempus Fugit,” which happens to be led in by an unaccompanied display of Nash’s impeccable bebop drumming. The gorgeously played French horn feature for Giovanni Hoffer on Powell’s ballad, “I’ll Keep Loving You,” is a true showstopper.

Ethan Iverson’s Bud Powell in The 21st Century is a landmark not only in his career but also in the legacy of Powell, a musician who came from a generation that longed for the opportunities to have their pieces appreciated as the true art it is. Iverson has stylishly recreated the legend’s pieces for a grand big band to perform on a festival stage in Italy. Powell’s spirit should be pleased.

1. Bud Powell In The 21st Century: I. Chorale 02:33

2. Bud Powell In The 21st Century: II. Continuity 04:13

3. Celia 05:10

4. Tempus Fugit 05:02

5. Five Simple Spells: I. Chorale 01:11

6. Bouncing with Bud 04:00

7. Five Simple Spells: II. Waltz 00:53

8. Wail 03:02

9. Five Simple Spells: III. Chorale 00:52

10. Dance of The Infidels 02:49

11. Five Simple Spells: IV. Moderato 01:15

12. 52nd Street 03:50

13. Five Simple Spells: V. Ballad 01:41

14. I'll Keep Loving You 05:46

15. Nobile Paradisco 11:10

16. Un Poco Loco 06:22

Ingrid Jensen - trumpet

Dayna Stephens - tenor saxophone

Ethan Iverson - piano, conduction (Tracks 1 & 16)

Ben Street - bass

Lewis Nash - drums

Giovanni Hoffer - French horn (Track 16)

Daniele Tittarelli - alto saxophone

Manuele Morbidini - alto saxophone, conduction (Tracks 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14)

Pedro Spallati - tenor saxophone

Rossano Emili - baritone saxophone

Mirco Rubegni - trumpet

Francesco Lento - trumpet

Francesco Fratini - trumpet

Massimo Morganti - trombone

Roberto Rossi - trombone

Federico Pierantoni - trombone

Rosario Liberti - bass trombone

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Steve Davis - Think Ahead (SMOKE SESSIONS 2017)

IN LIFE AS IN JAZZ, you never know what’s coming around the next corner – so it’s always best to think ahead. Trombonist/composer Steve Davis not only offers those two words as a sound piece of advice on his new album, Think Ahead, but exemplifies the art of putting it into action. Think Ahead offers a master class in reacting to the unpredictable from an elite group of jazz all-stars whose ability to create spontaneously borders on the clairvoyant.

In part, that’s simply due to the fact that Davis has assembled a stellar group of masters: the trombonist is joined by saxophonists Steve Wilson and Jimmy Greene, pianist Larry Willis, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash, each deserving the title of “jazz giant” in their own right. But add the fact that the bandleader shares with every member of the ensemble a long and deep history, and you have the makings of a truly profound, flawlessly swinging, flat-out burning set of music.

“I’ve been deeply involved with everyone in this band on not only a professional level but as friends for decades,” Davis says. “So it was more than an honor to have this group together.”

Davis is also well known as an important composer and the program on Think Ahead features seven of his originals including six striking debuts. The balance includes two beloved standards, Polka Dots and Moonbeams and Love Walked In, as well as two jazz classics by departed giants Tony Williams and Bobby Hutcherson. Williams’ “Warrior” and Hutcherson’s “Little B’s Poem”

Michele Hendricks (with Tommy Flanagan Trio) - A Little Bit Of Ella (Now & Then) 2016

Michele Hendricks & Cristal Records présentent : A Little Bit of Ella (Now and Then)

Il faut se réjouir que cet album paraisse enfin au grand jour après quelques années d'un inexplicable purgatoire... Il n'en est que plus riche et précieux, dans la mesure où il est devenu un double hommage, à Ella bien sûr, mais également, au grand Tommy Flanagan, disparu en 2001, et qui fut le plus fidèle et le dernier collaborateur régulier de l'irrésistible "First Lady". 

Michele Hendricks, née dans d'un père virtuose du "scat" et du style "vocalise" qui la mit sur scène encore enfant, compte parmi les seules artistes habilités à signer cet hommage. En premier lieu parce qu'elle connait en profondeur tous les secrets du chant de jazz pour l'avoir beaucoup pratiqué, aux côtés de quelques musiciens de premier plan, de Stan Getz et Art Blakey à Herbie Hancock et à divers groupes dirigés par Jon Hendricks, son père. En second lieu parce qu'à certains égards elle est une des seules héritières d'Ella Fitzgerald, dans la diversité de ses talents.

Michele Hendricks : vocals 

Tommy Flanagan : Piano 

Peter Washington : Double Bass 

Lewis Nash : Drums

Brian Lynch : Trumpet 

Robin Eubanks : Trombone 

David “Fathead” Newman : Tenor Sax

Jon Hendricks : vocals track 2

01. Sweet Georgia Brown (Bernie/Pinkard, Casey) short version

02. How High The Moon (Morgan Lewis/Nancy Hamilton) 

03. Love For Sale (Cole Porter) 

04. It Don’t Mean A Thing (Duke Ellington) 

05. Things Ain’t What They Used To Be (Duke Ellington) 

06. Oh Lady Be Good (Georges & Ira Gershwin) 

07. Our Love Is Here To Stay (Georges & Ira Gershwin) 

08. A Little Bit Of Ella (Now & Then) (Michele Hendricks)

09. Airmail Special (Charlie Christian) 

10. Everytime We Say Goodbye (Cole Porter) 

11. Sweet Georgia Brown (Extended Version)

BUY THIS ALBUM!!!

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