Kith Jarrett Trio: Somewhere Before (1968)

Kith Jarrett Trio: Somewhere Before (1968)

While still a member of the Charles Lloyd Quartet, Keith Jarrett did some occasional moonlighting with a trio, anchored by two future members of Jarrett's classic quartet, Charlie Haden (bass) and Paul Motian (drums). On this CD, Jarrett turns in a very eclectic set at Shelly's Manne-Hole in Hollywood, careening through a variety of idioms where his emerging individuality comes through in flashes. He covers Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages" -- which actually came out as a single on the Vortex label -- in an attractive, semi-funky style reminiscent of Vince Guaraldi. "Pretty Ballad" delivers a strong reflective dose of Bill Evans, while "Moving Soon" is chaotic free jazz. By the time we reach "New Rag," we begin to hear the distinctive Jarrett idiom of the later trios, but then, "Old Rag" is knockabout stride without the stride. As an example of early, unfocused Jarrett, this is fascinating material.

KEITH JARRETT, piano
CHARLIE HADEN, bass
PAUL MOTIAN, drums

My Back Pages
Pretty Ballad
Moving Soon
Somewhere Before
New Rag
A Moment For Tears
Pout’s over (And The Day’s Not Trought)
Dedicated To You
Old Rag

Recorded at Shelly’s Manne-Hole, Hollywook, USA, 30th 31st August 1968

Charlie Haden-Egberto Gismonti: In Montreal (1989)

Charlie Haden/Egberto Gismonti: In Montreal (1989)

Twelve years after the fact, this live duet performance from the 1989 Montreal Jazz Festival has finally been brought to light. It's a wonderful combination: Charlie Haden is comfortable in just about any setting (consider his tenures with Ornette Coleman, the Liberation Music Orchestra, and Keith Jarrett's American Quartet). Egberto Gismonti has been continuously honing and refining his idiosyncratic folk/jazz/Brazillian guitar (and piano) work on a couple dozen recordings in different settings since the '70s.

The '89 Montreal Jazz Festival was indeed momentous. Haden appeared on four Verve discs memorializing his live performances that summer, including three different piano trios with Paul Motian. This one stands out from the rest: it's so strikingly intimate that it strongly accents the personalities involved.

That said, it must be made clear that Gismonti really takes the helm on this recording. Not only are seven of the nine tracks his compositions, but his fingerprints are everywhere. Gismonti's stylized approach to piano and guitar often demand that Haden approach his instrument from different angles: melodic counterpoint, pulse, and lead. Haden adapts deftly. Shifting from guitar to piano and back, Gismonti generally adopts a shared approach, relying an ostinato pulse and pattering rhythmic chords as the foundation for stepwise transitions in harmony; or he simply pulses away in a gentle, understated way. The second track, Gismonti's "Maracatú," builds in both density and intensity, then relaxes into gentle undulating tones from both players that slowly fade away. You breathe. Then Haden's "First Song" begins almost inaudibly with quiet commentary, leading dramatically into a stark, folkish melody bearing obvious similarity to his Americana duets with Pat Metheny in '96. It demands faster changes from the guitarist, and a jazzier role than Gismonti usually delivers. Haden steps up into the lead, offering a warm, gentle, and uplifting melody—then Gismonti follows suit with a harmonized stroll of his own.

The remarkable "Em Familia" takes Gismonti into unexpectedly explosive territory, where the simple force of his guitar attack lifts the whole piece into the stratosphere; Haden hammers away behind him as they navigate several mountain passes. Six minutes into this piece, Gismonti pulls some tricks from his back pocket, using harmonics, muting, and various alternative techniques to achieve thread-like timbres. This tune stands as the true high-water mark on an otherwise fine record.

It's rare to hear such a dramatically successful live performance, and these two musicians clearly have a natural affinity for each other. Given the personalities involved, that makes sense. In Montreal stands right up there alongside Haden's other recorded masterpieces from that 1989 festival. (Only one complaint here: too much applause in the edits. But I suppose it's only fair to give the producer some slack for lingering on the cheers, since that energy seems to feed forward with these two players.) Ah, the inexorable problem with great live records... you just wish you had only been there.

Track Listing: Salvador; Maracatu; First Song; Palhaco; Silence; Em Familia; Loro; Frevo; Don Quixote.

Personnel: Charlie Haden: bass; Egberto Gismonti: guitar, piano.

Ornette Coleman : The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959)

Ornette Coleman 

The Shape Of Jazz To Come 

Atlantic 

1959

Ornette Coleman's Contemporary Records releases Something Else!!!! (1958) and Tomorrow Is The Question! (1959) documented the alto saxophonist's development from the last vestiges of bebop toward a harmonically freer jazz language. Coleman's album titles became more prophetic as they were released. The Shape Of Jazz To Come is a further, but not yet completed, evolution away from harmonic harnesses of the swing and bebop eras.

If Something Else!!!! brought the jazz literati's ears to attention with its spherical, untethered solos; and Tomorrow is the Question! further justified baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan's necessary sans-piano format, then The Shape Of Jazz To Come was the 16-inch shot across the bow of conventional jazz wisdom. It paved the artistic way for the next Coleman recording, The Change Of The Century (Atlantic, 1959). Gone are the chordal patterns that guided alto saxophonist Charlie Parker out of the swing era. Gone is the harmonic anchor of piano or guitar that was a jazz mainstay for years. What is left is a gently directed independent music trajectory, a concurrent and separate mode of invention for four instruments playing with only experience and self-understanding.

The structure (if that is what it can be called) of the six pieces comprising The Shape Of Jazz To Come is presentation of a theme (or traditional head) followed by free improvisation in the solo sections by Coleman and cornetist Don Cherry followed by restatement of the theme, multiple times, in some cases. Coleman hits upon his most empathic band with bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins, who remain reluctant last attachments to the old ways, providing a rock-solid swing to the recording as well as their own informed solo sections without interfering with Coleman's direction.

Coleman's approach is not unlike that employed by trumpeter Miles Davis that same year on Kind Of Blue (Columbia), recorded on March 2 and April 22, 1959, where Davis entered the studio with sketches of pieces and directed the band to improvise over scales rather than chords. What Coleman did differently with The Shape Of Jazz To Come (recorded May 22, 1959) was to do away with even scalar organization, opening up the solo canvas not simply two-dimensionally, but to fully four dimensions. The result to the jazz world was a full assault on two fronts that would eventually pave the way for post bop and fusion and bolder free jazz exploration.

The Shape Of Jazz To Come in a microcosm, can be heard in "Lonely Woman," a tune so far reaching yet amenable to coverage—by the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1962 on Lonely Woman (Atlantic) and saxophonist John Zorn in 1989 on Naked City (Nonesuch))—that it help ease Coleman's jazz medicine down critically. The rhythm is established by Haden, strumming bass chords, and Higgins, establishing the poly-rhythms of a near Eastern Indian mantra. Coleman and Cherry add their own Eastern flourishes saturated with the blues. It is mournful and searching, with enough dissonance to distract without covering first Coleman's and then Cherry's earthy, nearly down-home solos.

The ballad (if such definitions anymore apply) "Peace" is the most revealing track on the album. It offers Haden duets with the two soloists with appropriately minimal support form Higgins. Coleman and Cherry mix the entire history of jazz into their solos, expressing the results calmly and with purpose. Drawing from all of the genre influences surrounding him, Coleman plotted a course that led to this groundbreaking record, still, oddly, only the beginning of the revolution. In the meantime, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, who, by the end of the next decade, would have exhausted what Coleman starts here, was in New York with Davis making a history of a different sort.

Tracks: Lonely Woman; Eventually; Peace; Focus on Sanity; Congeniality; Chronology.

Personnel: Ornette Coleman: alto saxophone; Don Cherry: coronet; Charlie Haden: bass; Billy Higgins: drums.

Pat Metheny & Ornette Coleman: Song X

Amazon.com essential recording
Pat Metheny confounded fans and critics alike with this opening salvo for his new label, Geffen, delivering among the most uninhibited, collective meltdowns ever released on a major pop label. Song X served notice that this was one artist who refused to be pigeonholed. In joining forces with jazz maverick Ornette Coleman, Metheny midwifed a compelling declaration of principles on behalf of experimental musicians. Jack DeJohnette and Denardo Coleman throw down on acoustic and electronic percussion, and stalwart bassist Charlie Haden holds down the time. Metheny and Coleman journey through the interstellar regions of collective improvisation on the saxophonist's fulminating title tune and "Video Games" (with Metheny's room-full-of-mirrors synth guitar inventions) while unleashing a horde of killer bees on "Endangered Species." Still, for all the collective freneticism, the lyrical, swinging side of each artist is well represented on the Tex-Mex airs of "Trigonometry," the bluesy "Mob Job" and the elegant "Kathleen Grey." --Chip Stern

PAT METHENY : REJOICING

Metheny joins bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins, one of Ornette Coleman's finest rhythm pairings, for this 1983 recording. Rejoicing looks closely at Coleman's group dynamics and three of his tunes (though it's Horace Silver's "Lonely Woman," not Coleman's, that opens the album). The three mesh perfectly on Coleman's "Tears Inside," "Humpty Dumpty," and "Rejoicing," with Metheny generating long lines of melody over sprung rhythms. While the guitarist often shifts musical direction from CD to CD, his compositions on Rejoicing offer remarkable contrasts. He creates a rich overdub of electric and acoustic guitars for the ballad "Story from a Stranger," then generates an almost Albert Ayler-like sound for the intensely electric dirge "The Calling," the mood enhanced by Haden's bowed bass and animated by Higgins's free drumming. --Stuart Broomer