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Thank You, Duke!Arkadia Jazz All-Stars  70003released Oct 19, 1999 Hear it! 
Buy it!
Track 10, The Feeling of Jazz, is an unreleased track from the “live at Smalls” For Adults Only concert.  Several artists on the Arkadia roster contribute previously unreleased tracks to this quite satisfying collection of Ellington covers. Two solo piano tracks are particularly intriguing: one from Dr. Billy Taylor with his usual sleek sophistication, and Joanne Brackeen offering a sparer sound, airy and sinuous yet bristly, like an anemone [and just as gorgeous]. Benny Golson contributes a couple of straightahead tracks [after all, he is one of the Original Masters of Straightahead!], and Harold Land blows an exquisite sax over a string backing that is sinewy rather than syrupy. The most astonishing track, though, has to be reedman T.K. Blue and pianist Randy Weston duetting on a more obscure Duke song, Chromatic Love Affair --- listen to this strange yet beautiful song and reacquaint yourself with Duke’s powerful genius as a composer. However, our primary purpose here is to deal with the Joris Teepe quintet track featuring Chris on tenor. Teepe’s arrangement for twin reeds gives the opening a friendly, intimate feel. Then Chris takes the main solo for the tune, and what a solo it is! For the first couple of choruses, Chris plays it close to his chest, with smooth swinging phrases that wouldn’t sound out of place in the 40s Basie band. But gradually his sound grows spikier and more fervid until he’s closer to 50s Sonny Rollins territory. The solo keeps developing from there, venturing into “a semitone off” phrasing a la Ornette, leading into churning speed and overblowing in a free Trane vein. Then in the final chorus Chris brings it back down with simpler, bluesy constructions, reminding me of neobop’s “return to roots” over the last couple of decades. Essentially, what Chris has done in this solo is conduct a two-and-a-half minute demonstration of the evolution of jazz in the sixty years since Duke’s heyday, showing how each era arises with a natural flow from the one before -- very appropriate for a song called The Feeling of Jazz. Either Chris planned that out deliberately for this song ahead of time [in which case it’s a clever idea executed well], or this evolutionary structure simply arose as he improvised [in which case this solo is one of the most amazing examples on record of spontaneously composed form]. I’ll leave that for Gunther Schuller to sort out, though... My description might make what Chris has done here sound a bit too calculated and bloodless, but it doesn’t come off that way at all. If you have the patience for a bigger file, listen to the whole solo here [290KB] and see if that alone isn’t worth getting the CD for! |
