Gershwin Blue

Al Caiola & Don Arnone - Great Pickin' + Soft Guitars (2016) {Blue Moon BMCD 876 rec 1960-1962}
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© 1960-62, 2016 Chancellor / Time Records / Blue Moon | BMCD 876
Jazz / Cool / Guitar

The name of Al Caiola has been part of that very select fraternity of studio musicians who were heard on most of New York’s top rated television and recording assignments from the 40s up to the 70s. There’s a distinctive style and approach in his playing which made for a “sound.” On these recordings, Caiola joined forces with Don Arnone, another top-class, revered and busy studio jazz and pop guitarist. Both men get the chance to swing on these albums featuring two dozen well-known standards and originals, which showcase how well their unique styles blend.

Jazz pianist Michel Camilo, working with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra under Ernest Martinez Izquierdo, attempts here to make something new out of George Gershwin's heavily recorded Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F – broadly speaking, he tries to tie these jazz-classical fusions more closely to their jazz roots. Given the fluency with which Gershwin moved between the worlds of classical music, jazz, and pop, the experiment would seem a worthwhile and interesting one, but the recording, at least for those with the usual ways of performing Gershwin in their ears, is likely to come off as neither fish nor fowl.

An historical album if there is one, with its iconic cover photo. Conducting from the piano in Rhapsody in Blue, Leonard Bernstein manages to capture the lean vigor and impertinence that emanates from the work. He whips up a beefy orchestral contour while subtly jazzy, intensely inspired and romantic in feeling. The dynamic Suite An American in Paris is full of that energy that Bernstein used to know how to distil like no other did. Listen to the orchestra rip into the Charleston. These recordings, from 1958-59, are fabulous, and well worthy of their reference status. The famous West Side Story Symphonic Dances, and the Symphonic Suite "On the Waterfront" complete this album of American music bursting with infectious enthusiasm.

Wayne Marshall was born in 1961 and is an English pianist, organist, and conductor. He’s the Chief Conductor of WDR Funkhausorchester in Cologne and Organist and Associate Artist of the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.