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Related CD ID: HRM003 HR015 | HR016 is part of CD Set
HRM003
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CD2
a. Very Early (Bill Evans; lyrics Carol Hall)
Bowed bass in, brushed snare...very rubato float recitativalish. The whole opening savors the gorgeous chord changes, especially at their points of toniest transition. The vocal is so relaxed and deliberate—a perfect example of stopping time so as better to sculpt it.
b. Voyage (Kenny Barron)
An instrumental that muscles the brand new Yamaha grand. Heffley lurches around like a Frankenstein who has moments of grace and flow in his staggers, letting the other two speak out sporadically, freely jamming in the end (it’s a voyage from nature and peace to love...)
c. No Moon at All (Reed Evans & Dave Mann)
...the love of a solo piano for sly, bluesy opening, groovy feel of stealthy cool as cobbled together from the monster’s lurchy-crashing choice of notes and rhythms in the no-time tempo, which the bass and drums just clunked along and killed off well.
d. I'm All Smiles (Michael Leonard, lyrics Herbert Martin)
Killed off...what? Nature, it seems. First we have an early rain, then no moon...then, when nature gives way to love, in this song, no rain either...as “rainbows keep filling the sky.” What nature dried out, love drove in. It’s reflected in the piano music; while it’s still more rhythmically and tonally jagged than his later Bill Evans CDs, it begins to shimmer with the drama of narrative in melody and chord progression with which Bill Evans seduced Heffley away from so many other things musical in his later years.
e. Waltz for Debby (Bill Evans; lyrics Gene Lees)
This is a tune Heffley the trombonist had played regularly throughout his pre-Braxton decades; what intimacy he’d worked out with it on his horn he now sought to expand, to embrace its whole harmonic matrix and flow in his two hands and ten fingers. It served for him, a single father of an only child, as it had for its composer, lyricist, and untold numbers of others: the bittersweet lament of the emptied nest. Time sowed nature into love, love into pregnancy and birth, birth into a brand new life and longer, bigger love. Here was a music rich and deep enough to give it all voice.
Yet, as we’ll see when we reach ahead still another decade, to its incarnations on the solo CDs of Bill’s corpus, it is halfway between the fey, wistful renditions of the young local-club gigger of the 1980s and the rock-solid resignation and surrender to its final drops of the reclusive post-Millennial pianist-monk of our current moments.
Here, the bittersweet and the rock-solid are both still lava cooling; he was still mostly playing trombone, and that in the wildest ranges of Braxton’s music, in groupings large and small, often with the other two players here. The open-ended jaggedness of that universe was touching base with the younger jazz world all three came up in, as if they each meant to show the continuum between the two their own lives embodied. The most refined, even effete sensibilities were thrown like a die with its counterpart in the most adventurous, experimental ploys.
At one point, in the final bridge out, it swings so hard into a quintessential jazz groove and climax that it feels like it’s channeling a big band, only to back off the energy the moment before it might become possessive, compulsive-obsessive, into the slow, the sweet, and finally, to end...the abstract.
f. Saga of Harrison Crabfeathers (Steve Kuhn)
This song and lyric might have been the B side on an old 78 or 45 vinyl version of “Waltz for Debby.” The piano soars into greater, if airier heights, and the lament of the emptied nest is imbued with the suggestion of some even greater sorrow, matched by some redemptive joy beyond it as outrageous as the wound was egregious (think of God’s idea of reparations for Job).
g. Crystal Silence [solo] (Chick Corea)
The whole world just woke up the moment my love returned.
I knew by the crystal silence the fire would nevermore burn.
The moment is always, it goes with me everywhere;
the music in crystal silence continues bright and fair,
and I’d love to take you where all the rushing glory and hushing story is told.
The things laid out for us to do are true beyond our wildest dreams.
The hope of the future draws closer to fact with each breath,
and I trust that my crystal silence will be undisturbed by my death.
Then, the perfect closer. The singer and player turns what soul and skill he has in this new milieu at that point in the stoic retrospect of one who’s sung all that could be sung about love of life, life in love, love’s labors lost in birth, and love alone beyond all loved ones gone: “It was beautiful, I remember it, I did it...now it’s gone, ahead only death”...and so he waits, at peace.
h. Crystal Silence [trio] (Chick Corea)
Er...(ahem)... and so he waits, at peace.
(Man, when is this crystal silence ever going to end?)
Okay, guys, enough of this solo swan song—why don’t you jump back in with me on this and tear it up a bit while we’re waiting so patiently? (Thus ends its goodness well...)
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Tracklisting of HR016
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