Archie Shepp – Live At The Donaueschingen Music Festival

Bill Evans, Bobby Hutcherson, Karin Krog, Archie Shepp - Live At The Festival (1970-1973) {Enja rel 2007}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44.1kHz - Digital Download -> 272 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 120 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 1970-73, 2007 Enja Records
Jazz / Hard Bop / Post Bop

This very interesting CD contains four unrelated performances from three editions of Yugoslavia's Ljublijana Jazz Festival. The Bill Evans Trio (with bassist Eddie Gomez and a slightly out-of-place Tony Oxley on drums) plays "Nardis," "'Round Midnight" is explored by the duo of Karin Krog (who half-speaks her vocal) and bassist Arild Andersen, tenor-saxophonist Archie Shepp and his quintet romp through the uptempo blues "Sonny's Back" in fairly straightahead if ragged fashion and, best of all, the 1970 Bobby Hutcherson-Harold Land quintet explores an original in 7/8; Land in particular is outstanding. This CD offers listeners four examples of the jazz modern mainstream of the early '70s.

As the '60s drew to a close in a hail of blood and lead, jazz gradually began to close its doors. What had blossomed in the '50s and '60s as young men struggled to raise a music out of the whorehouses of New Orleans and into the concert halls turned into something less and more than it had been. Musicians like Archie Shepp no longer looked to the future or to what they might borrow from classical forms. Instead, they looked back to the cotton fields, the slave market, and the slum to find their voice. The music took an angry turn, emphatically stating, "This is our music." Stunned by the assassinations of Martin and Malcolm, many young musicians turned from a country and a culture they thought had betrayed them. Archie Shepp went to Paris. There, in the summer of 1969, he cut these albums, each a classic in its own right, each a milestone in an under-appreciated career…

Asia are an English rock supergroup formed in London in 1981. The most commercially successful lineup was its original, which consisted of four members of different progressive rock bands who had enjoyed great success in the 1970s: lead vocalist and bassist John Wetton (King Crimson, Uriah Heep and U.K.), guitarist Steve Howe (Yes), keyboardist Geoff Downes (Yes and the Buggles) and drummer Carl Palmer (Emerson, Lake & Palmer). Their debut album, Asia, released in 1982, remains their best-selling album and went to number one in several countries. Billboard listed it as the top album in the U.S. in 1982. The lead single from the album, "Heat of the Moment", remains their top charting and best-known song, reaching the top 40 in over a dozen markets. It peaked at #4 in the U.S. on the Billboard Hot 100 and hit #1 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart.

Liza Lim's (b. 1966) compositional practice reflects on Asian ritual cultures, Australian Indigenous aesthetics, weaving and knots as a metaphorical ‘technology for thinking’, ecologies of collaboration, and distributed creativities. ...Alternative pop music has been as important a source of inspiration for Jon Øivind Ness (b. 1968) as the classical canon, though still he writes almost exclusively for acoustic classical ensembles.

Filmed at Switzerland's Montreux Jazz Festival in 1999, the concert (also available on CD) features some of the genre's best players, like pianist Bob James and guitarist Larry Carlton, both of whom appear with their own bands, backing other musicians, and with their group Fourplay. Also on hand are keyboardist George Duke, saxophonists Kenny Garrett, Boney James, Kirk Whalum, and Mark Turner, and trumpeter Rick Braun. The performances are all good; these fellows can play, and singers Kevin Mahogany and Gabriela Anders are no slouches either.

Duke Ellington's concert at the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival lacked the excitement and adventure of his appearances in 1956 and 1958. Ellington and his orchestra played their usual program of standards and features with the 14-and-a-half-minute "Idiom '59" being introduced…