Fred Kaplan

Keith Jarrett & Charlie Haden: Last Dance

Fred Kaplan Jun 19, 2014

Almost exactly four years ago, I posted a Blog that began like this: "Let's put the main point up front. The new duet album by Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden, Jasmine (on ECM), is a gorgeous piece of work: all standards, mainly ballads, nothing fancy (not overtly anyway), but such poignancy and quiet passion; it's a glimpse into the intimacy of the act of making art." A follow-up CD is out now, Last Dance...

Fred Kaplan

Stacey Kent—Who Knew?

Fred Kaplan Jun 13, 2014

I guess I'm going to have to start listening to Stacey Kent. At her early set at Birdland in midtown Manhattan Wednesday night, I sat down a skeptic and came away charmed.

Fred Kaplan

Paul Bley, Play Blue

Fred Kaplan May 31, 2014

Paul Bley's Play Blue: Oslo Concert (on the ECM label) is a bracing solo piano album. Think Keith Jarrett, with less Rachmaninoff and more Monk, but the distinctions sway on the margins. Bley too is a romantic improviser, immersed in jazz idiom but classically trained (and he lets it show, though less showily than Jarrett).

Fred Kaplan

Sonny Rollins' Magnificent Road Shows, Vol.3

Fred Kaplan May 19, 2014

Road Shows, Volume 3 (on Okeh Records) might be Sonny Rollins' greatest album ever. Certainly it's the album that most closely supplies the sensation of a live Sonny Rollins concertor the best moments of several live Sonny Rollins concerts, which is what the whole Road Shows series is meant to be.

Fred Kaplan

The 2014 Jazz Awards (and mine)

Fred Kaplan Apr 16, 2014

The Jazz Journalists’ Association announced its 2014 awards this week. I don’t think I’ve disagreed with so many of its picks. In most cases, I’d simply rank others higher than the JJA balloteers; in some cases, though, I part from their judgment pretty vigorously. Here are some of the JJA winners, followed by my choices...

Fred Kaplan

Decca Sound: The Analogue Years

Fred Kaplan Apr 11, 2014

OK, this isn't jazz, but it's such a crazy bargain, I couldn't resist shouting it from my rooftop: Decca Sound, The Analogue Years 54 albums (and bits of several more) from the Decca label's heyday of classical recording (the mid-'50s to late-'70s), pressed in a boxed set of 50 CDs, selling for $129.

In case you're too stunned to do the math, that's $2.58 per disc!

Fred Kaplan

Ambrose Akinmusire, The Imagined Savior…

Fred Kaplan Apr 04, 2014

Three years ago, Ambrose Akinmusire, 28, burst upon the scene as the most promising young jazz trumpeter since Dave Douglas. His debut album, When the Heart Emerges Glistening (on the Blue Note label), was hailed (and not just by me) as one of the best of 2011. His new CD, The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint (also out on Blue Note), is better.

Fred Kaplan

The Bad Plus: The Rite of Spring

Fred Kaplan Mar 28, 2014

It should be no surprise that The Bad Plus, the bad-boy trio of polymorphous po-mo jazz, should take a stab at Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. The stunner is that they've pulled it off so masterfully. This disc (on the Sony Masterworks label) is no "jazzing up the classics" gimmick; it's the real thing, as legitimate a renderingand, on its own terms, as wallopingas any out there.

Fred Kaplan

Art Blakey and the Blue Note Sound (at 45rpm)

Fred Kaplan Mar 18, 2014

When people talk about "the Blue Note sound," they're talking about the sound of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengersor, more to the point, the sound of that band as captured by Rudy Van Gelder for Blue Note Records: the two- (later three-) horn harmonies arrayed across the stage, the drum kit's airy sizzling cymbals, the up-close intensity of the mix (Van Gelder pushed the levels beyond the point where most engineers feared to roam).

Two new releases by Music Matters Jazzthe audiophile company that specializes in reissuing Blue Note LPs, each title mastered at 45rpm, spread out on two slabs of 180-gram vinyl, and packaged in separate slots of a beautifully reproduced gatefold cover and priced at $49.95tell you what you need to know.

Fred Kaplan

Miles Davis, The Original Mono Recordings

Fred Kaplan Feb 11, 2014

I've never been a mono-phile. Yes, mono is better than electronically reprocessed stereo. And yes, for some of the early stereo recordings, where the engineer smacked one of the horns in the left speaker and the other in the right, it's better to hear everyone in the center. And, finally, there are cases, most notably on many of The Beatles' albums, where the musicians supervised the mono mix and ignored the stereo, making the mono, in a sense, the authoritative version. But in general, those albums that were recorded in stereo, I prefer to hear in stereo.

But the latest excavation from the Miles Davis archive, The Original Mono Recordings, nine CDs of the nine albums made for Columbia from 195563, is an exception, a set worthy of attentionthough not so much because the discs are in mono.