Don Don Elliott

Don Elliott - Double Trumpet Doings (1955) {Jazzland OJCCD-1925-2 rel 1999}
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© 1955, 1999 Jazzland Records / Fantasy | OJCCD-1925-2
Jazz / Cool / Mainstream Jazz / Trumpet

Originally issued under the slightly more esoteric title “New Counterpoint for Six Valves” this is a disc dominated mainly by the frequent dialogues between its two principle soloists. Elliott and Dedrick make a disparate pair and their contrasting sounds are prime reason for the program’s more interesting outcomes. Elliott was a follower of bebop and renowned more for his talents as a vibraphonist than as a brassman. A collaborator at various times with the likes of George Shearing, Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich his artistic enterprises also moved beyond the realms of jazz into Broadway musicals and novelty tunes. Dedrick was more the product of a swing upbringing and his tone is shaped by a mellower, less overtly complicated approach.

Don Elliott - Mellophone (1955) {2013 Japan Bethlehem Album Collection 1000 Series CDSOL-6098}
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© 1955, 2013 Solid Records / Bethlehem | CDSOL-6098 | LP BCP-12
Jazz / Cool / Mellophone

They're not lying with the title of this great little set — as Don Elliott blows his unique horn with a very mellow tone ! The instrument is kind of a bigger version of a flugelhorn — and is used by Don in a laidback combo that also features trombone from Billy Byers, trumpet from Howie Reich, and baritone sax from Danny Bank — all deep sounds that set up a bank of color for Elliott to work with in his most vivid way. Other players include Hal McKusick on alto and flute — but working without as much of the sharper, cutting tones of other 50s albums — and rhythm is from Barry Galbraith on guitar, Milt Hinton on bass, and Mel Zelnick on drums.

Bill Evans & Don Elliott - Tenderly: An Informal Session (1956-1957) {Milestone 0025218931724 rel 2001}
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© 1956-57, 2001 Milestone Records / Fantasy | 0025218931724
Jazz / Cool / Modal Music / Piano / Vibes

Bill Evans, the pianist, and Don Elliott, the multi-instrumentalist, were longtime friends and colleagues. They had a band together when they were New Jersey teenagers in the mid-1940s. During Evans’ period of heavy freelance work a decade later, he frequently played in his old pal’s group. The music on this CD comes from tapes recorded by Elliott in his home studio during 1956 and 1957 as the two worked out ideas. An Informal Session, the CD’s subtitle accurately calls it. The occasional car horn filters in from outside. We plainly hear Evans straining to bend a song to his conception. We hear the musicians’ comments and laughter. “That was fun. You were cookin’, man,” Evans tells Elliott.

In his 90th year, Elliott Carter is doing something few nonagenarians ever do: he's premiering a striking new string quartet, his fifth. And it's an awe-inspiring piece. The Arditti String Quartet takes up the short phrases that run with and then against one another with sureness, plucking and scraping and making their bows sing. They then delve into each of the five interludes that interrogate the quartet's six sections and play through the disparate splinters of tone and flushes of midrange color as if they were perfectly logical developments. Which they're not. Carter has again brilliantly scripted a chatter of stringed voices–à la the second quartet–that converse quickly, sometimes mournfully, but never straightforwardly. This complexity of conversation is a constant for Carter, coming sharply to light in "90+" and then in Rohan de Saram and Ursula Oppens's heaving read of the 1948 Sonata for Cello and Piano, as well as in virtually all these pieces. This is a monumental recording, extending the documented work of a lamentably underappreciated American composer.

Spanning landscapes from Mexico to Canada, the Pacific Crest Trail covers thousands of miles of natural beauty, creating a transformative journey captured in FROM WILDERNESS from Navona Records. Choral Arts Initiative, conducted by Brandon Elliott and joined by cellist Kevin Mills, paints these landscapes from composer Jeffrey Derus with vibrant color, with vocal soloists giving identities to the spirit animals one may encounter on the trail. A concert-length work and meditation, the listener will hear a wash of sounds that allow for introspective reflection on the sacredness of nature, the profound text, and themselves.