Maybeck Flac

Producing a darker tone from the Maybeck Yamaha piano than do some other participants in the series, Kenny Barron gets a chance to flaunt a wider range of his influences than he usually does in a group format. Barron opens with a stride-ish "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You," which sports a few minor fluffs (this is live, folks), and then explores a number of diverse styles under the bop umbrella. Barron's "Bud-Like" has reminiscences of "Un Poco Loco," built on an ostinato bass pattern most of the way, with a witty "Bemsha Swing." As usual with Maybeck, the sound of the hall's bright, brittle Yamaha piano is brilliantly captured.

George Cables - At Maybeck (1994) {Concord Jazz ‎CCD-4630}
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© 1994 Concord Jazz ‎| CCD-4630
Jazz / Post Bop / Mainstream Jazz / Piano

Locked right into the mainstream, the ever-reliable Cables gets his shot at a solo recital in Vol. 35 of Concord's voluminous Maybeck series. From the opening track ("Over the Rainbow") onward, Cables immediately settles into the prevailing Maybeck idiom, sporting a do-everything technique rooted in bop, with frequent Tatum flourishes, Evans-influenced voicings, and standards as the specialty of the house. The core of the recital is a three-song, 18½-minute Gershwin medley ("Bess, You Is My Woman Now," "My Man's Gone Now," "Someone to Watch Over Me") which is perfectly listenable but doesn't shed any new or different light on these very-often-covered songs.

Dave McKenna - Live At Maybeck (1990) {Concord Jazz CCD-4410}
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© 1990 Concord Jazz | CCD-4410
Jazz / Mainstream Jazz / Standards / Stride / Piano

Live at Maybeck Recital Hall is an album of solo performances by jazz pianist Dave McKenna, recorded in 1989. When Joanne Brackeen first arrived at the tiny Maybeck Recital Hall for a concert in June 1989, she was so delighted with the piano and the acoustics that she insisted that Concord owner Carl Jefferson arrange to have her performance there recorded. The message hit home and over the next few years, several dozen solo piano concerts were duly recorded by the label until the hall was sold and it was no longer available for tapings. One of the first concerts to follow Brackeen's featured Dave McKenna. He seems in a particularly lyrical mood throughout this afternoon concert, though his trademark buoyant bassline is often present.

While solo and duo recordings do not come in all sizes, they indeed have various shapes. Slam Stewart and Don Byas, as the only two musicians to make a nearly snowed-out 1945 Town Hall gig, formed an impromptu, but unquestionably musically satisfying duo (remembered largely for their lickety-split version of “I Got Rhythm”). Jim Hall and Bill Evans are dependably sublime on Undercurrent. Turning to solo work, Evans waxed Alone as a solo pianist, creatively entering a relatively crowded recorded space that also includes contributions from Thelonious Monk (Solo Monk, Alone in San Francisco), Art Tatum’s Piano Starts Here, and Ray Bryant’s Alone With the Blues, not to mention Concord’s voluminous Maybeck Recital Hall series. Solo jazz saxophone recordings, on the other hand, are few and far between, making Eric Alexander’s solo contributions to the recording here all the more unique and important. And although the living master Sonny Rollins recorded in this format (The Solo Concert), contributions here seem most often to coalesce around the avant-garde (Anthony Braxton’s For Alto and Roscoe Mitchell’s Solo Saxophone Concerts).

While solo and duo recordings do not come in all sizes, they indeed have various shapes. Slam Stewart and Don Byas, as the only two musicians to make a nearly snowed-out 1945 Town Hall gig, formed an impromptu, but unquestionably musically satisfying duo (remembered largely for their lickety-split version of “I Got Rhythm”). Jim Hall and Bill Evans are dependably sublime on Undercurrent. Turning to solo work, Evans waxed Alone as a solo pianist, creatively entering a relatively crowded recorded space that also includes contributions from Thelonious Monk (Solo Monk, Alone in San Francisco), Art Tatum’s Piano Starts Here, and Ray Bryant’s Alone With the Blues, not to mention Concord’s voluminous Maybeck Recital Hall series. Solo jazz saxophone recordings, on the other hand, are few and far between, making Eric Alexander’s solo contributions to the recording here all the more unique and important. And although the living master Sonny Rollins recorded in this format (The Solo Concert), contributions here seem most often to coalesce around the avant-garde (Anthony Braxton’s For Alto and Roscoe Mitchell’s Solo Saxophone Concerts).

While solo and duo recordings do not come in all sizes, they indeed have various shapes. Slam Stewart and Don Byas, as the only two musicians to make a nearly snowed-out 1945 Town Hall gig, formed an impromptu, but unquestionably musically satisfying duo (remembered largely for their lickety-split version of “I Got Rhythm”). Jim Hall and Bill Evans are dependably sublime on Undercurrent. Turning to solo work, Evans waxed Alone as a solo pianist, creatively entering a relatively crowded recorded space that also includes contributions from Thelonious Monk (Solo Monk, Alone in San Francisco), Art Tatum’s Piano Starts Here, and Ray Bryant’s Alone With the Blues, not to mention Concord’s voluminous Maybeck Recital Hall series. Solo jazz saxophone recordings, on the other hand, are few and far between, making Eric Alexander’s solo contributions to the recording here all the more unique and important. And although the living master Sonny Rollins recorded in this format (The Solo Concert), contributions here seem most often to coalesce around the avant-garde (Anthony Braxton’s For Alto and Roscoe Mitchell’s Solo Saxophone Concerts).