Fred Kaplan

The Thelonious Monk Quartet: The Complete Columbia Studio Albums Collection

Fred Kaplan | Aug 08, 2012 | 3 comments

In a sense, I understand why Thelonious Monk's albums on Columbia, recorded between 1962 and 1968, have been neglected. His earlier sessions, on Blue Note, Prestige, and Riverside, were the ones where he introduced his classic songs, developed his eccentric style, and played with star-studded rhythm sections. The six quartet albums for Columbia feature a total of just six new Monk songs. And they find him playing with a working band of accompanists—no John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Griffin, Art Blakey, or Roy Haynes here.

Bob Brookmeyer, Standards

Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan | Jun 30, 2012 | 1 comments

Sometimes you hear a CD, things come up, you store it away and forget about it, until something compels you to take it out of the closet, give it a spin, and you kick yourself for your negligence, you realize, suddenly, belatedly, that this is a really special album. That's my story with Bob Brookmeyer's Standards (on the ArtistShare label), a pretty magnificent send-off from one of the most elegantly inventive big-band composers in jazz, released in 2011, shortly before he died at the age of 81.

Jason Moran & Herlin Riley at the Blue Note

Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan | Jun 25, 2012 | 4 comments

Wednesday night, June 20, I witnessed a marvel that, among many other things, confirmed my (hardly original) belief that the recording industry has to change its business model.

2012 Jazz Journalists Association Awards

Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan | Jun 22, 2012 | 0 comments

Three Jazz Journalists Association Awards for Sonny Rollins (Photo: www.sonnyrollins.com)

The Jazz Journalists' Association held its annual bash at the Blue Note jazz club in New York City Wednesday afternoon: crowded, boisterous, and, thankfully, air conditioned (it was 97 degrees out on the sidewalk).

The big winner—no surprise—was Sonny Rollins, who nabbed Best Musician of the Year, Best Tenor Saxophonist of the Year, and (for Road Shows, Vol. 2) Best Album of the Year. I voted for Rollins in all three categories as well—a rare instance when I've been at one with the consensus on the top prizes.

Ravi Coltrane’s Spirit Fiction

Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan | Jun 15, 2012 | 1 comments

It’s risky, to say the least, for John Coltrane’s son to take up the tenor and soprano saxophones as a profession, yet that’s what Ravi Coltrane has been doing for 25 years, 15 of them as a leader, and his latest album, Spirit Fiction (his first on the Blue Note label), is his triumph.

Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green on Blue Note 45

Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan | Jun 10, 2012 | 0 comments

Three great new offerings from Music Matters Jazz, the house that reissues Blue Note classics on gatefold-covered, double-disc vinyl 45rpm LPs: Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil, Herbie Hancock's Empyrean Isles, and Grant Green's Street of Dreams. All were recorded in 1964: the first two are among the best titles in Blue Note's catalogs; the third is one of the more purely pleasurable.

Chico & Rita and Pina

Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan | May 18, 2012 | 5 comments

And now for two soundtrack albums, Chico & Rita and Pina: the first explicitly jazz, the other prancing all around its borders, both completely captivating.

Krell Cipher SACD/CD player

CD Player/Transport Reviews Hi-Rez Disc Player/Transport Reviews Audacious Audio

Fred Kaplan | May 14, 2012 | 9 comments

Around the turn of the century, a review of the latest hair-raisingly expensive turntable would often begin with a soothing chant that, yes, the RotorGazmoTron XT-35000 is a tad pricey, but it will be the last piece of analog gear you ever buy—so go ahead, take the plunge. A dozen years later, pressing plants are stamping out LPs 'round the clock, and new high-end turntables are rolling off production lines at a respectable clip. So who knows whether today's Cassandras might be equally premature in bewailing the death of the Compact Disc? Which is to say that I can't in good conscience urge you to pay $12,000 for a CD player on the grounds that the medium's about to die, so splurge now while there's still something to splurge on. But if you have the scratch, and the itch for such a product, step right up and let me tell you about the Krell Cipher.

P.S. and a Correction on the Vijay Iyer Trio

Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan | Apr 26, 2012 | 1 comments

I saw the Vijay Iyer trio at Birdland in midtown Manhattan two weeks ago. It was a great show. Most of the songs were from the band's new CD, Accelerando (which I raved about in my March 31 blog post), some were from earlier albums; all were riveting. The trio weaves in and out of patterns with a swinging agility. Iyer plays piano with precision yet gusto; he could have been a master interpreter of Liszt or Ligeti, had he chosen that direction. If you have a chance to hear this group live, take it.

But my main purpose here is to correct something I wrote in that earlier post about the album's sonics, namely that "the drums have that digital swish (I'd like to hear the ride cymbal ring and the bass drum boom once in a while)." Well, after watching the group in person, I have to conclude that the drummer, Marcus Gilmore, doesn't like to hear those things very much. He tightens his drum heads more than any drummer I've seen (he re-tightened them several times during the show), to the point where banging them (or the cymbals, which I didn't see him tighten, but he must have before the set) produces almost no decay. He seems to aim for razor-sharp control of his share of the rhythm.

In other words, the drum sound you hear on Accelerando, like it or not, comes quite close to the sound of Gilmore live. The real thing swishes forth a bit more air, but the difference isn't huge; if I'd known what he sounds like in person before hearing the disc, I wouldn't have criticized anything. Apologies to the engineer, Chris Allen.

Vijay Iyer Trio, Accelerando

Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan | Mar 31, 2012 | 2 comments

A few weeks ago, I finally got around to the Vijay Iyer trio's new CD, Accelerando (on the ACT label), and I've listened to at least a few tracks of it almost every day since. This is a stunningly good album: monastically intricate, but also a rousing head-shaker, it's even danceable, I give it a 96.

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