Live at Birdland (ECM)
Lee Konitz/Brad Mehldau/Charlie Haden/Paul Motian
Released May 13, 2011
JazzTimes Top 10 Albums of 2011
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About:
A quartet of master musicians and a program of jazz classics. Live At Birdland presents the finest moments from two inspired nights at New York’s legendary club, as Konitz, Mehldau, Haden and Motian play “Loverman”, “Lullaby Of Birdland”, “Solar”, “I Fall In Love Too Easily”, “You Stepped Out Of A Dream” and “Oleo” with freedom, tenderness, and a love of melody that only jazz’s greatest improvisers can propose. On this live recording from New York’s legendary club, an ensemble of history-making players dives into the music without a set list. Four exceptional jazz musicians -Lee Konitz, Brad Mehldau, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian – approach the standards from new perspectives and unusual angles. They play them with freedom, tenderness and a melodic and rhythmic understanding found only amongst jazz’s greatest improvisers.
Track Listing:
1. Loverman (James Davis / Jimmy Davis / Roger “Ram” Ramirez / Roger Ramirez / James Sherman / Jimmy Sherman) 11:56
2. Lullaby Of Birdland (George Shearing) 10:16
3. Solar (Miles Davis) 11:39
4. I Fall In Love Too Easily (Sammy Cahn / Jule Styne) 10:17
5. You Stepped Out Of A Dream (Nacio Herb Brown / Gus Kahn) 11:49
6. Oleo (Sonny Rollins) 15:19
Personnel:
Lee Konitz: alto Saxophone
Brad Mehldau: piano
Charlie Haden: double bass
Paul Motian: drums
Recorded December, 2009 at Birdland, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber, Nelson Wong, Paul Zinman, Sean Mair
Mixed by James A. Farber, Manfred Eicher
Assisted by Akihiro Nishimura
Photography by John Rogers
Design: Sascha Kleis
Producer: Manfred Eicher
Review:
An early favorite for best live
release of 2011, Live at Birdland documents extended
improvisations on a half-dozen jazz and pop standards over two nights in
December 2009. Lee Konitz, Charlie Haden and Brad Mehldau had done something
similar in Los Angeles more than a decade ago, resulting in a pair of albums.
This time they’re joined by Paul Motian, with whom they’d each worked
previously-anywhere from the decade or so Motian and Haden logged together with
Keith Jarrett in the ’70s to Mehldau’s first encounter with Motian a few months
earlier at the Village Vanguard.
These masters couldn’t be better suited
philosophically. Konitz and his breathy, cerebral alto sax were there at the
birth of the cool with Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan, and for the
contemporaneous birth of free jazz with Lennie Tristano. Motian cut his teeth
underpinning Bill Evans’ refined freedom. Haden helped Ornette Coleman make
free jazz famous, but his Quartet West is latter-day cool at its best. And
while at 40 he’s half the age of two of his bandmates, Mehldau shares the
group’s reverence for standards and the notion that “free” can be soft, slow,
smart, subtle and sophisticated. And pretty.
They worked sans set lists. Konitz or Mehldau
would back his way into a classic of his choosing, and the others would join
in, adhering to Ezra Pound’s dictate that artists “make it new.” Sonny Rollins’
“Oleo” gets the freest workout; Motian adds a strong solo to his colorful rhythmic
support on Miles Davis’ “Solar”; and George Shearing’s “Lullaby of Birdland”
has extra resonance with Shearing’s death earlier this year. (December 2009,
not incidentally, was the 60th anniversary month of the original Birdland’s
opening.) Haden takes the best of his deeply melodic and meditative bass solos
on “I Fall in Love Too Easily.” And Konitz and Mehldau leave enough crumbs
behind in their dazzling deconstructions of familiar melodies to prevent anyone
from getting lost.
Bill Beuttler (JazzTimes)
