Page 101 - Hi-Fi_News_-_December_2020 video
P. 101
ALBUM
REVIEWS
JAZZ COMPACT DISC SUPERAUDIO DVD BLU-RAY VINYL DOWNLOAD
RON MILES JOHN COLTRANE THELONIOUS MONK
Rainbow Sign Giant Steps (60th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) Palo Alto
Blue Note 0731333; 2LPs: 0731334 Atlantic Records/Rhino 0349784839 (two discs); 2LPs: 0349784834 Impulse! 0711285; LP: 0711284
Denver-based trumpeter and composer Ron Just weeks after he’d played on Kind Of Thankfully now available, this stunning
Miles holds a senior teaching position but Blue with Miles Davis, Coltrane recorded album captures Monk live in Oct ’68, when
has also recorded many albums, including this epochal album. His composition ‘Giant he was under contract to Columbia. After
one with Ginger Baker and half-a-dozen Steps’ modulates constantly with the a short postponement of its July 31 issue
with guitarist Bill Frisell. Most recently, ‘Coltrane changes’ that have challenged date, Impulse! announced that the digital
Frisell appeared on Miles’s three albums for generations of players and are the subject release would be via Sony Music. The music
the German label Yellowbird. For the last of many a learned treatise. But you also was recorded at Palo Alto High School
of these, I Am Man, pianist Jason Moran, get the beautiful ‘Naima’, the fast and fi ery thanks to the efforts of 16-year old student
bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Brian ‘Mr PC’, and four other fine tracks, while this Danny Scher, who’d precociously booked
Blade completed the quintet that also new edition adds a second disc containing the Monk quartet for an afternoon benefi t
appears here on Miles’s Blue Note debut. eight selected out-takes. Completists will concert. It’s full of a joyous, unstrained
It’s music that sounds fractured at fi rst, already have the remaining 20 out-takes, feeling, and is such a vibrant, atmospheric
but with an almost supernatural rapport which were in the 1995 Heavyweight recording that you forgive imperfect
between Miles and Frisell. They play the Champion CD box set, but for streaming or balance and the creaking piano bench.
unexpected and yet it all fits, just as Miles’s download these are now included in a Whether you’ve a shelf-full of Monk albums
pieces are intricate and yet direct. SH 35-track Super Deluxe Edition. Whew! SH or none at all, you must have this one. SH
Sound Quality: 85% Sound Quality: 85% Sound Quality: 80%
0 - - - - - - - - 100 0 - - - - - - - - 100 0 - - - - - - - - 100
ALLISON NEALE
Quietly There
Ubuntu Music UB0062
This Seattle-born, UK-based alto saxophonist
can if she chooses sound exactly like Desmond
or, as on the title track here, a little like Getz.
Following a long musical partnership with
guitarist Dave Cliff, who sadly retired due to
illness, Neale led a great quartet with pianist
Leon Greening. But for her fifth album, her
first for Ubuntu, Neale revisits the ‘space and
openness’ of a guitar-based quartet, as Peter
Bernstein joins her favoured bass and drum
team of Dave Green and Steve Brown. They
bring sprightly life to a tune that often drags,
‘Midnight Sun’, they dig happily into John
Lewis’s cool blues ‘Two Degrees East, Three
Degrees West’, and cheer up some songbook
standards too. Carefree, melodic, delightful. SH
Sound Quality: 90%
0 - - - - - - - - 100
|
|
co
news
10
uk
fi
DECEMBER
DECEMBER 2020 | www.hifi news.co.uk | 101
2020
hi
www