Filippo Dall’Asta: The Hot Club Of Tenerife (filippodallasta.com)
Italian guitarist Dall’Asta has achieved considerable success with his fusion of “gypsy jazz” and popular music to produce these jazz-lite performances recorded in Tenerife and Krakow. Widely travelled in Europe, he has appeared at The Royal Albert Hall, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London (I’m not making this up) and festivals in Italy and France.
He recounts that a move to Tenerife in 2022, where he founded a “gypsy guitar retreat” prompted him to rely on instinct rather than intellect to make for easy charts for his students and then began exploring “unconventional arrangements of jazz standards”.
Four titles here are his own compositions and include a gently moving Mona Lee, while others – After You’ve Gone, Blue Skies, and The Man I Love – evoke and invoke distinct echoes of Django Reinhardt’s Quintette du Hot Club de France. He recounts gnomically that “Each musician brought their unique influences and backgrounds to the album, and I embraced every idea.”
Dall’Asta is the nimble and sensitive soloist on all 10 tracks, with supporting contributions from rhythm guitarist Yeray Herrera and clarinettist Kepa Martinez, notably on Man I Love. Group and single vocals and the addition of two violins and a cello on some tracks, add flavour to the proceedings. How appealing these rebooted versions of classic tunes plus the original compositions by the leader will be to some listeners is a matter of conjecture. In a hand-written note to me to me, Dall’Asta said “hope you enjoy the music!” I have, but with some reservations.
In excellent sound, with frequent references to swing and bop, creative solos and Lemerle’s own logical compositions, this is an album to savour
Félix Lemerle: Blues For The End Of Time (Tzim Tzum Records)
This 10-track debut recording by French composer and guitarist Lemerle can be recommended unreservedly. Except for Rise ’n’ Shine (Vincent Youmans) and Dismissed (Samuel Lerner) all the compositions were written by him. Accomplished pianists Lerner and Bertha Hope make alternate and joint contributions, while bassist Ari Rolan and renowned drummer Jimmy Cobb complete a highly inventive, non-competitive and audibly co-ordinated quintet.
The opening track, Blues For The End Of Time, is the only one to feature all the players, and was written a couple of days before the recording. Lemerle’s stated intention was to contrast the style of both pianists – as Sonny Rollins did on his recording of Misterioso which featured Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver.
New World Expectations was written by Lemerle while still living in Paris but contemplating a move to New York. His sensitive solos are one of the (many) highlights of the album. Detachment, a fast-paced Lemerle original, is followed by Rise ’n’ Shine, which features a blistering solo from Cobb. The longest track (at 8.03), The Grind, is dedicated to composer and pianist Herbie Nichols, with extended solos by Lerner and Lemerle. In excellent sound, with frequent references to swing and bop, creative solos and Lemerle’s own logical compositions, this is an album to savour.
Méva’s Journal: Chimera (4000 Records 4K44)
On several counts, this CD (including its title) is a mystery. It has an oblique and mawkish note of thanks “to everyone who aided in the creation of this album”, including “the Quigley family for all of their teachings over the years”. There is more in the same vein. Leader and drummer Evan J. Evans wishes “to personally thank Minnie and my family for all their love and support who got me to this point”. Touching. But we are none the wiser as to the provenance or purpose of this compilation.
At first glance, the back cover appears to show five be-suited men marching in step towards a darkly lit auditorium. The front cover depicts this wannabe Famous Five crouching against a wall, with mixed facial expressions. A slightly different photograph of the group appears on the CD itself. Their respective names (and instruments) are identified in the skimpy notes, as are the titles (but not the composers) of the seven tracks on this curio. Repeated attempts to discover (online) any information about the group – its origins, nationalities, place of recording – have been in vain.
This post-bop orientated quintet, consisting of the aforementioned Evans, Chris James (alto), Tyger Middleton (tenor), Alex Askew (double bass) and Jordan Stitt (piano) perform – with varying degrees of competence and conviction – seven (unaccredited) compositions. Chimera, the concluding title, maintains a boppish flavour throughout, while a mournful Chandelier limps along, offering noisy drumming, a screeching alto but little illumination.
Ill-served in its presentation and marketing, this studio session is dedicated to “our friends and loved ones who have supported our gigs over the years”. After repeated playing (and fruitless research), I find Chimera offers little to write home about.
Messrs Richard Cook and Brian Morton too readily dismiss Quinichette as “very much a middle-order batsman”. In fact, he was a prolific and commanding tenor saxophonist
Paul Quinichette: The Vice ‘Pres’ Legendary Sessions 1951-1954 (Fresh Sound FSR-CD 1150)
Generally regarded as simply a Lester Young clone, Paul Quinichette (1916 -1983) was widely known as The Vice-Pres, a copyist not an innovator. Messrs Richard Cook and Brian Morton too readily dismiss him as “very much a middle-order batsman”. In fact, he was a prolific and commanding tenor saxophonist, equally at ease in small group settings and big band aggregations. Frequently reissued, these early 1950s sessions (with alternate takes of Green Is Blue and Birdland Jump) made for the Mercury, EmArcy, Dale and Decca labels, represent perhaps his finest early work. This new reissue benefits from excellent remastering, attractive illustrations, and informative essays by Jordi Pujol, Dan Morgenstern, Mark Gardner and Leonard Feather.
If a jazz musician is (partly) known by the company he or she keeps, Quinichette deserves our respect. Among the notables (and fellow spirits) in this superb anthology are Buck Clayton, Count Basie, Joe Newman, Dicky Wells, Bill Doggett, Walter Page, Milt Hinton and Jo Jones. Any – in fact all – of the 42 titles are unreservedly recommended. Just try Cross Fire, The Hook, Swinging The Blues, People Will Say We are In Love, The Heat’s On (or The Heat’s Off), and you are guaranteed unadulterated pleasure.
Jordi Pujolo observes that just when Lester’s playing began to deteriorate, Quinichette made “most codas more than perfunctory endings”. Leonard Feather wrote that on his 1953 Decca recordings (with Marlow Morris on organ and Jo Jones on drums) that Paul, “definitely a product of the ‘cool’ era of which Lester was a founding father, revealed a sound and personality all his own”. Well said, to which I would only add that after the death of “Pres” in 1959, Paul finally emerged from under his shadow, and went on to produce a series of splendid albums in the company of such luminaries as Nat Pierce, Thad Jones, Osie Johnson, Freddie Green and (suspend disbelief), John Coltrane.
