Carla Bley – The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu – Watt

by | Nov 4, 2007 | Jazz CD Reviews | 0 comments

Carla Bley – The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu – Watt 34, 55:51 **** [Release date: Nov. 6, 2007]:

(Paolo Fresu, trumpet & Flugelhorn; Andy Sheppard, soprano & tenor sax; Carla Bley, piano; Steve Swallow, bass; Billy Drummond, drums)

A new Carla Bley album is also an occasion. It’s been quite a few years since the cigarette girl at Birdland became a keyboardist and composer, and today some critics compare her writing to Ellington and Mingus. She has had a small group with herself on keyboards and partner Steve Swallow on bass for many years, often called The Lost Chords. At the same time her occasional big band forays have been well received. Now she has a trio with English saxist Andy Sheppard and also added Billy Drummond – the drummer from her big band. Sheppard urged her to get Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu, who has a vibrato-less style reminiscent of Miles Davis.  Their trumpet/sax duo makes for a distinctive voice , and Carla clearly writes especially for them, just as Ellington wrote for the proclivities of his soloists.

All nine tracks are Carla’s originals, and all are fresh new works except the final one. The first six constitute a six-movement Banana Quintet – so named because she wanted to work with variations on the number five, there are five fingers on the hand, and a bunch of bananas is called a hand (or something like that).  The sixth very short movement is titled One Banana More, in mind of the children’s rhyme about One Potato More. Each movement has a different, contrasting mood and feeling, and the fourth quotes in the bass a passage from the Beatles’ Abbey Road album. Death of Superman was a tribute to Christopher Reeve, and Liver of Life – my personal favorite track – a vehicle for the aforementioned two-horn front line of her quintet. The clean and present recording quality comes from a studio in the South of France and is fully up to ECM’s highest standards.

TrackList:

One Banana, Two Banana, Three Banana, Four, Five Banana, One Banana More, Liver of Life, Death of Superman/Dream Sequence #1 – Flying, Ad Infinitum

 – John Henry
 

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