Ivey-Divey (Blue Note)
Don Byron
Released September 21, 2004
JazzTimes Album of the Year 2004
Grammy Nominee Best Jazz Instrumental Solo 2005
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=NMLc5hPIeOc&list=OLAK5uy_koCaK562mc5BtfaTKkq_01ztdMWoqfCQc
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/03ws2WPrbwqxWPcHrR0Q2q?si=qG4LFq-yRnmeMNt25QnMbw
About:
Clarinetist Don Byron is known for his musical experimentation — playing classical compositions, Latin dance grooves, hip-hop, klezmer and pop songs. For his latest project, Byron returns to his first love — jazz, with a CD largely dedicated to legendary saxophonist Lester Young.
With the CD Ivey-Divey, Byron reinterprets music from the 1946 recording Lester Young Trio, in which Young was accompanied by Nat King Cole on piano and Buddy Rich on drums.
“With Lester Young, I think there’s a discipline suggested that at the moment I reheard him seemed very tangible to me,” Byron tells NPR’s Michele Norris. “He’s an incredibly disciplined person that kind of wants to sound like he has no discipline at all, like he’s just walking in the park.” Ivey-Divey includes a pair of Miles Davis tunes as well. And ironically it’s on Davis’ “In a Silent Way” that Byron says he hears himself sound the most like Young. It doesn’t hurt that Byron is accompanied on the new CD by drummer Jack DeJohnette, who was on the original Davis sessions of “In a Silent Way.”
Track Listing:
1. I Want to Be Happy (Irving Caesar / Vincent Youmans) 8:47
2. Somebody Loves Me (Buddy DeSylva / George Gershwin / Ballard MacDonald) 7:15
3. I Cover the Waterfront (Johnny Green / Edward Heyman) 5:05
4. I’ve Found a New Baby (Jack Palmer / Spencer Williams) 6:05
5. Himm (For Our Lord and Kirk Franklin) (Don Byron) 5:29
6. The Goon Drag (Sammy Price) 3:18
7. Abie the Fishman (Don Byron) 5:08
8. Lefty Teachers at Home (Don Byron) 6:35
9. “Leopold, Leopold…” (Don Byron) 4:02
10. Freddie Freeloader (Miles Davis) 7:09
11. In a Silent Way (Miles Davis / Joe Zawinul) 9:29
12. Somebody Loves Me (Buddy DeSylva / George Gershwin / Ballard MacDonald) 6:32
Personnel:
Don Byron: clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone
Jason Moran: piano
Jack DeJohnette: drums
Ralph Alessi: trumpet (6, 9)
Lonnie Plaxico: bass (6 – 9, 11)
Recorded May 23 – 24, 2004, at Allaire Studios, Shokan, NY
Produced by Hans Wendl
Recorded and Mixed by Tom Lazarus
Assisted by Ralph Cutler and Matthew Cullen
Mastered by Joe Lambert
Creative Director: Gordon H. Jee
Art Direction: Burton Yount
Review:
Over the last decade, Don Byron has dominated his instrument like no other reed player in jazz and he has been the musician most responsible for the return of the clarinet as an important solo vehicle. Yet his recording career as a leader has been uneven.
Byron has gotten caught up in various one-off improbable projects (klezmer bands, collaborations with rappers, Schu-mann and Puccini arias), and while he has always risen above them and discovered startling new cultural and musical juxtapositions, they have limited if not distorted his artistic development.
Ivey-Divey could change all that.
While it continues Byron’s history of idiosyncratic projects (it is a tribute to a 1946 recording by a Lester Young bass-less trio with Nat Cole and Buddy Rich), it works. In fact, it more than works-it is outrageous and sublime.
Jason Moran and Jack DeJohnette are inspired choices for the Cole and Rich chairs. Moran’s powerful piano injects constant surprise and ideational density into the group improvisations. DeJohnette, with his crashing strategic eruptions and running side commentaries, always instigates.
As for Byron, he plays (clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone) with a wild abandon made meaningful by the clarity of his overarching purpose. He is after, not the literal language, but the spirit of the Young trio: “very joyous sounding, but also cerebral.” Performances begin with embedded vintage material associated with Pres like “Somebody Loves Me” (in two epic takes) and “I’ve Found a New Baby,” and escalate into maelstroms of ecstasy and analysis. “I Want to Be Happy” somehow does not fly apart despite Byron’s roaring and shrieking on bass clarinet and Moran’s hammering.
Byron also finds Young’s spirit residing in two Miles Davis classics, “In a Silent Way” and “Freddie Freeloader.” The latter references the original and then explodes it (in Byron’s rapturous clarinet pipings) and stomps on it (in Moran’s merciless disso-nant kicks).
With Ivey-Divey, Don Byron has finally made a major album.
Thomas Conrad (JazzTimes)
