Emerald City Nights (Live At The Penthouse 1966-1968)

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Volume 2 of this unearthed Seattle material finds piano master Ahmad Jamal in a trio setting with bassist Jamil Nasser and three different drummers. All have impeccable feel and a firm handle on Jamal’s ceaselessly inventive use of form and arrangement. In Jamal’s music, the arrangement is not an afterthought. A song needn’t go right away to solos, or only to solos; it can detour, hover, groove, develop into something new, something distinctly Ahmad Jamal—that boldly virtuosic but laidback and spacious aesthetic that so captured the imagination of early Miles Davis. The musical theater repertoire of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse figures heavily in this animated 1965-1966 live set. Jamal had just released <i>The Roar of the Greasepaint</i>, devoted to songs from the Newley/Bricusse musical of that name. “Who Can I Turn To?” is the most famous of these, recorded by Bill Evans on <i>Trio ’65</i> right around this time as well. Even more striking is “My First Love Song,” with drummer Chuck Lampkin conjuring a huge swing feel, as sublimely old-school as it is radically modern. “Poinciana,” with Frank Gant on drums, is Jamal’s signature piece, its lilting drum pattern now known in the trade as the “Poinciana beat.” Vernel Fournier, the New Orleans-born drummer who created that beat, appears on the adventurous “Concern,” the sole Jamal original of the set. It is often said that Jamal approaches the piano as his orchestral canvas, yet this risks overlooking his sheer power as a player. His boldness, clarity, idiosyncrasy, and authoritative swing as an improviser puts him in a league with Earl Hines, Erroll Garner, and other giants in the jazz lineage. Wonderfully, Jamal was 92 as these <i>Emerald City Nights</i> volumes rolled out, and quite compelling in interviews about the significance of this music and this epoch in jazz history.

via Apple Music