Piano Anna Rose Carter

Japanese pianist Mari Asakawa has made a beautiful album of the works of Carter and Babbitt. She has the full measure of these works, this album presents these superb pieces in the best possible light. Mari began her piano studies in Japan at the age of five, and in 1980 moved to the United States. At the age of 15, she won the Westchester Competition, performing the Grieg concerto, followed by a performance of the Bach concerto at Alice Tully Hall. She earned a Bachelor's degree at the Julliard School, where she studied with Georgy Sandor, and received a Masters of Music at Yale University. In 1998, she moved to Italy, continuing her studies with Bruno Mezzena at the Accademia Musicale Pescarese, earning a diploma of the highest honor. Most recently, she was appointed to a teaching position at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, where she teaches piano performance.

To hear bassist Kent Carter on this '84 recording is to hear the bassist in an entirely different context than anything his work with Steve Lacy and Paul Bley would belie. Always an artist with a penchant for strengthening an ensemble and its collective voice, Carter has comprised his ostensibly "solo" work of exercises and experiments documenting his search for a unified string conception in a group context. The use of overdubbed parts on everything from Ligeti-esque soundmasses to Eastern European folk explorations on his '74 Emanem recording, Beauvais Cathedral, point directly to Carter as something more than a sideman. Of late featuring Albrecht Maurer and Emmanuelle Roch on violin and viola, respectively, the Trio in this early incarnation consists of Carter, Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro (who has since become a mainstay of the Lisbon free music scene), and French violist Francois Dreno. One of the most noticeable things about this string configuration is the replacement of the usual cello with the bass (and Carter is an accomplished cellist as well).

Avid Jazz continues with its Four Classic Albums series with a second re-mastered 2CD set release from Benny Carter, complete with original artwork, liner notes and personnel details. For our Second Set from the instantly recognisable horn of Benny Carter we have selected four more albums for you to enjoy as we again pay tribute to one of the true legendary giants of the jazz world.
“The Tatum, Carter, Bellson Trio”, “Makin’ Whoopee”, “B.B.B & Co.” and “Further Definitions”.
Jazz greats heard on these four phenomenal selections include some of the greatest names in the jazz world, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Art Tatum, Louis Bellson, Jo Jones, Barney Bigard, Shorty Sherock, Jimmy Rowles, Leroy Vinnegar, Mel Lewis, Phil Woods, Charlie Rouse, Dick Katz and Jimmy Garrison.

Throughout much of the 20th century, Benny Carter was an accomplished composer, arranger, leader, sideman, and multi-instrumentalist. In 2004 the U.K.'s Proper label served his memory well with Proper Box 68 which carefully examines a 22-year segment from his unusually lengthy career. If a reasonably priced 88-track, four-CD set of swing and early modern mainstream jazz dating from 1930-1952 seems like too much of a good thing, maybe you really need to hear more jazz and not less, for here in the land of its birth we still have a lot of catching up to do in order to better comprehend this important part of our cultural heritage…

Benny Carter - 4 Albums From The MusicMasters Catalogue - Set 2 (1990-95) {4CD Set Nimbus Records rel 2011}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.42 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 664 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 54 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1990-95, 2011 MusicMasters / Wyastone Estate / Nimbus Records | NI 2741/44
Jazz / Bop / Jazz Blues / Post Bop / Mainstream Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Saxophone

Benny Carter's MusicMasters catalogue turned up some fine sessions in which colleagues included Clark Terry, Hank Jones, and Doc Cheatham, among a raft of musicians - for the stellar singers, see the end of this review. The recordings, made in various locations, span the years 1990-95 and reveal the altoist seemingly unruffled by the reach of Time, still spinning some sublime and harmonically darting lines as if for the first time.

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.