It is with a mixture of pride and sorrow that Smoke Sessions Records announces the release of Harold Mabern’s Mabern Plays Mabern on March 20th. Pride because Mabern’s 27th recording as a leader, culled from the same three January 2018 nights that generated his 26th, The Iron Man: Live At Smoke, documents the master pianist, then 81, in prime form, functioning as an inspired soloist, attentive accompanist, melodic interpreter, and crafty tunesmith. Sorrow because the release is posthumous — Harold Mabern died on September 17, 2019, at the age of 83.
This 6-CD box set pays tribute to one of the greatest English conductors of our time, whom celebrates his 85th birthday this year. Knighted in 1980, Sir Colin Davis has conducted numerous world renowned orchestras including the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra, to which he was the principal conductor for over ten years.
From the opening four notes of Michael Henderson's hypnotically minimal bass that open the unedited master of "On the Corner," answered a few seconds later by the swirl of color, texture, and above all rhythm, it becomes a immediately apparent that Miles Davis had left the jazz world he helped to invent – forever. The 19-minute-and-25-second track has never been issued in full until now. It is one of the 31 tracks in The Complete On the Corner Sessions, a six-disc box recorded between 1972 and 1975 that centers on the albums On the Corner, Get Up with It, and the hodgepodge leftovers collection Big Fun. It is also the final of eight boxes in the series of Columbia's studio sessions with Davis from the 1950s through 1975, when he retired from music before his return in the 1980s. Previously issued have been Davis' historic sessions with John Coltrane in the first quintet, the Gil Evans collaborations, the Seven Steps to Heaven recordings, the complete second quintet recordings, and the complete In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and Jack Johnson sessions. There have been a number of live sets as well; the most closely related one to this is the live Cellar Door Sessions 1970, issued in 2005.
Features the latest remastering. Includes a Japanese description, lyrics. Features original cover artwork. A legendary album from this tenor genius from Chicago – a hell of a player who emerged in the same generation as Clifford Jordan, John Gilmore, Eddie Harris, and Johnny Griffin – yet never fully got his due! The album's easily one of the most sharp-edged for the Bethlehem label – and has the power of a rare Blue Note or Prestige date from the same time – thanks partly to Harold's sharp bite in the tone of his tenor, and partly to an ultra-hip lineup that includes Charles Davis on baritone sax, Julian Priester on trombone, Phillip Wright on piano, Thomas Williams on bass, and Walter Perkins on drums.