Artform Revisited (Savant Records)
Louis Hayes
Released July 5, 2024
New York Times Best Jazz Albums of 2024
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mcRaeTRWTUWf55tlwVuOFwpFPNgZ-19LQ
Spotify:
About:
Louis Hayes’ music is full of life and humanity. It is sometimes refreshingly simple and sometimes intricately complex, sometimes light, sometimes dark, but it is always interesting and consistently engaging. Through it all, Louis Hayes has always remained indefatigably optimistic and his latest Savant release is all those things. Throughout the album Hayes, a 2023 NEA Jazz Master, coaxes concise, well-conceived tracks from his players where everybody swings with loads of feeling, and no self-indulgence. From the first note to the last Hayes creates performances that take veteran jazz listeners into deep jazz waters while at the same time allowing recent converts to safely wade into the invigorating flow of ideas.
Track Listing:
1. Tour De Force (Dizzy Gillespie) 5:29
2. Milestones (John Lewis) 4:05
3. My Little Suede Shoes (Charlie Parker) 5:21
4. You’re Looking At Me (Bobby Troup) 5:51
5. Ruby (Louis Hayes) 5:42
6. Cheryl (Charlie Parker) 3:35
7. Ray’s Idea (Ray Brown / Gil Fuller) 5:20
8. A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing (Billy Strayhorn) 4:24
9. Dewey Square (Charlie Parker) 6:06
10. G (Louis Hayes) 4:36
Personnel:
Louis Hayes: drums
Abraham Burton: tenor saxophone
Steve Nelson: vibraphone
David Hazeltine: piano
Dezron Douglas: bass
Recorded January 25, 2024 at Trading 8s Studio, Paramus, NJ, by Chris Sulit
Mixed by Chris Sulit
Mastered by David Darlington
Photography by Anna Yatskevich
Graphic Design: Irem Ela Yildizeli
Producer: Dezron Douglas, Louis Hayes
Executive Producer: Maxine Gordon
Review:
A prime pleasure this year was hearing Louis Hayes — a working drummer for around 70 years, who helped lay the foundations for hard bop through his early work with Horace Silver, Cannonball Adderley and others — dig into “G,” the slow blues that ends “Artform Revisited,” the latest in a string of albums he has released as a bandleader stretching back to 1960.
Throughout this record, a tribute to the golden age of bebop featuring a sharp intergenerational cast, Hayes’s loose yet insistent ride-cymbal beat acts as a red carpet, ushering the listener back to an earlier era in style.
Hank Shteamer (New York Times)
