Ewan Svensson Quartet: The Forks (ESMCD 2507)
Swedish jazz guitarist Ewan Svensson will be 75 this summer. In the early days he played in rock, blues and dance bands before forming his first jazz trio 42 years ago. He’s played with all the top Swedish jazz musicians as well as the likes of Art Farmer, Bob Berg, Clark Terry, Johnny Griffin, Randy Brecker, Maria Schneider and Georgie Fame.
Svensson’s current trio have previously released eight albums. His longstanding drummer, Magnus Gran, has been with him since 1989 and his bassist Yasuhito Mori since 1993, when he replaced Palle Danielsson. Born in Tokyo, Mori has been resident in Sweden since 1981. He’s played with Stan Getz, Toots Thielemans, Lee Konitz, Maria Schneider, Art Farmer and Clark Terry amongst others. The trio is broadened on The Forks to a quartet by Jakarta-born pianist Simon Westman who incidentally leads his own trio with Magnus Gran on drums.
The album is a tribute to trumpeter and flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler, with whom Svensson played many times. Of the 11 tracks, lasting 57.12 mins, six are Wheeler compositions from the albums Songs For Quintet, One Of Many, Angel Song, All The More and Still Waters. The rest are originals penned by Svensson.
You can listen to the quartet’s rendition of the title track, The Forks, here. And the album’s tracklist can be found here.
Cyrus Chestnut: Rhythm, Melody And Harmony (High Note HCD7359)
Baltimore-born Cyrus Chestnut has been described by Downbeat as “one of the finest jazz pianists of his generation”. He was raised with the sounds of gospel music – his mother was a church choir director and his father a church organist who taught him to play piano at the age of three. When Chestnut was seven he was playing in the family church and by the age of nine was promoted to church pianist.
Now 62, Chestnut is known for his versatility in blending gospel with bop, contemporary and soul jazz. He’s been bandleader in over 30 recordings and over the years has worked with an array of artists including Jon Hendricks, Betty Carter, Donald Harrison, Freddie Hubbard, Jimmy Heath, Wynton Marsalis, Chick Corea, Bette Midler, Joe Lovano, Gary Bartz amongst many others.
He’s on piano in his latest album, with Stacy Dillard on tenor and soprano sax, Gerald Cannon on bass and Chris Beck at the drums, performing nine numbers over 50 minutes. Six are Chestnut originals. Two are rearrangements of standards – Autumn Leaves and an expressive solo piano performance of Moonlight In Vermont. The closing number is a hymn, William Cowper’s There Is A Fountain.
For tracklist and further details take a look at this brief album announcement. For a longer taste, have a listen to one of Chestnut’s compositions, Ami’s Dance.
Freddie Hubbard: On Fire: Live From The Blue Morocco (Resonance Records HCD 2073)
The music on this high-energy double CD was recorded in 1967 at the fabled but short-lived Blue Morocco jazz club in the Bronx, New York. Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard was at the height of his powers and the artists accompanying him were his working band at the time: Bennie Maupin on tenor sax, Kenny Barron piano, Herbie Lewis double bass and Freddie Waits drums.
The performance hasn’t seen the light of day until now. It’s also the first of only two occasions that you can hear Hubbard in a live setting as band leader in his own right. (The other being the set recorded in Baltimore a fortnight later on Fastball: Live At The Left Bank.)
Hubbard had just turned 29 yet he’d already recorded nine studio albums as leader and numerous others as sideman. He’d arrived on New York’s jazz scene nine years earlier and it quickly became apparent that he was extraordinarily talented. Before long he was playing with the likes of John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter, to name just a few.
Total playing time of On Fire is seven minutes short of two hours. It consists of seven extended numbers with the longest, a jaunty Bye Bye Blackbird, at 24 minutes. There are four firebrand Hubbard compositions – Crisis, Up Jumped Spring, True Colors and Breaking Point, a hard bop-meets-Latin version of Summertime and a surprising anomaly, Echoes Of Blue, penned by bassist Bob Cunningham which is somewhat dull compared to the rest if I’m honest.
This otherwise sparkling set comes with an informative 32-page booklet containing photos of band members, liner notes by Zev Feldman, John Koenig and Bernard Drayton who recorded the gig, interviews with Hubbard’s son, Maupin and Barron plus testimonials from Eddie Henderson, Charles Tolliver, Jeremy Pelt and Steven Bernstein. Further album details are here.
