Joe Lovano JL 2.iv.11

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Joe Lovano talks to AS about his recordings


all under his own leadership so no Time On My Hands by Paul Scofield ... a great Lovano album ...

[charles t]

Time On My Hands by Paul Scofield ... a great Lovano album

Was fortunate to hear the group, Calum. Had a hard-edge sound for the time.

Still recall the scattering of those Chicago North-Shore suburbanites fleeing Ravinia Pavilion...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

except it is John Scofield innit ... bad day yesterday , dazed and confused not in it ...



so sue me

[Ian Thumwood]

Hello

Will have to listen to the Joe Lovano programme on "Listen again" as I this was on whilst I was at the football and have been tied up since with cooking a meal seeing as it's Mother's Day. (Cheers, Nigella!!)

I would have liked to have responded earlier but I have been in France for most of last week looking around medieval monuments in Laon and Soissons as well as enjoying the food and making some new friends. Before I took the Eurostar on Monday, i had been to see Joe Lovano's "Us five" (now without Esperanza Spalding) and thought that this gig was pretty incredible. The odd thing about the band is the fact that there are two drummers which did imply that the gig could have been extremely bombastic. Whilst there was no lack of fireworks, I was staggered at just how "musical" the two drummers were. Sometimes the piano got a bit swamped although usually one of the drummers dropped out when he soloed. By and large, the Cuban drummer seemed to compliment the more straight ahead jazz drummer and the way that knitted in to each other was extremely intelligent.

Over the last six or so months there has been a healthy debate about whether contemporary players are actually adding anything to the syntx of the music. Lovano had alwas struck me as someone who has really added to the post-Coltrane vocabulary but seeing him last Sunday (and this is about the fourth time I have heard him play live) I was really struck by how the manner he seems to construct his lengthy solo's are more akin to someone like Sonny Rollins. I've also seen Rollins twice in the past (I will be seeing him for a third time in July) but the way he stacks phrases on to of each other was exactly the way Joe Lovano played last week albeit I think the younger player pushes his improvisations into harmonic areas where Rollins doesn't usually venture and is willing to incorporate multi-phonics whereas Sonny is more "polite." To my ears, both soloists are totally compelling and have the ability to apply a significant degree of architecture in the way they construct the solos that for me marks them out as being supreme jazz musicians.

That John Scofield disc is really goo, by the way although one of the oddities in the Penguin Guide which is very much under-valued. The late Richard Cook and Brian Morton often seem to do this with albums I would consider to be "great." Andrew Hill's exceptional "Dusk" also gets a lukewarm review. I've actually got the lead sheet to "Let's say we did" from this album which looks simple enough for the A sections if this AABA tune but then throws in an 11-bar bridge! Everytime I play this with the friends I rehearse with, we always stumble at this pointwhich is made worse by the odd accents of the pedal note in the bass. Looks easy on paper but the reality is something very different!