Jazz for aficionados
This is one of the most perfect jazz cuts ever, "Blue Trane"; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1GrP6thz-k This composition is like a puzzle, and each musician's solo is the perfect piece to the puzzle. My favorite Trane; (maybe), but there are many Trane's that are my favorite Trane on a given day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWG2dsXV5HI Enjoy the music. |
"Into the misty mid region of Weir"; here is where this music takes you if you listen from beginning to end. BY EDGAR ALLAN POE The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crispéd and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year; It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir— It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wftjgLr4Yds |
@orpheus10 Ah Blue Train--I have played this recording too many times to count. Trust me, my family tells me so. The whole album is wonderful and the title song itself never grows old to me. From the original liner notes: "The title number, Blue Train, is a moving, eerie blues. Trane rides swiftly down a lonesome track with Lee (Morgan) and Curtis (Fuller) shoveling extra coal into the boiler near the end of his solo....What is the most striking attribute (among many) about this LP is its free, but not disorganized, blowing mood that has everyone in exceptional from both individually and collectively"--Robert Levin Levin got it right in describing the whole of this record. I too think the song Blue Train, recorded here, is close to jazz perfection. I must say that Rudy Van Gelder listened to some of the best music ever made in real time--right there in front him. |
I understand what you mean about RVG’s sound. It’s excellence is undeniable, but it definitely had a signature. I suppose the ultimate goal for a recording engineer recording acoustic instruments is for the music to not sound "recorded". The "in your face" quality you refer to is there; the mic is very (too?) close to the horn. Still, his technique managed to capture the soul of the performance. If I may take a small liberty here, I would say that the reason that you don’t like that kind of sound may be due to your frequent attendance at classical music performances. In general, classical music performance values and recording techniques tend to give the listener a more distant perspective than other genres. This is very important since ensemble playing benefits from a certain distance to the listener. Musical interplay, tonal and rhythmic, by the players requires that distance for the harmonic envelopes of each instrument to fully develop on their way to the listener’s ears. This gives more meaning to things like ensemble blend and interplay. When things are recorded up close some of that information gets lost, in jazz as well as classical. Btw, no yacht on Lake George here. My idea of chillin is to dig in the dirt at my upstate NY little piece of heaven where I can be around more "unknowns, and as it should be" (like someone very wise wrote in some other thread) than in the city. |
