52 JAZZTIMES SEPTEMBER 2019
ALBUMS x VIDEOS x BOOKS
REVIEWSSTAN GETZ
Getz at the Gate
VerveAny newly discovered vintage Stan
Getz live tape has to shoulder some
formidable competition—especially if
you believe that the finest recordings
he ever cut were the in-concert sessionsJohn Neves, pianist Steve Kuhn, and
the heroic Roy Haynes on drums. It’s
time we grant Haynes that label; ever
notice how on nearly every session he
contributes to, he is the player who
makes his band cook?
This band is no exception, but
whereas 11 years earlier at the Roost,
Getz was decked out in the blues, he’s
pushing the pace here. A postbop man
who wants to rebop, you might say. He
tears through “Airegin,” his tone like an
advancing gust through a wind tunnel;
it rounds the bend, and buffets you—
but in a feel-good way—with its physi-
cality. “Wildwood,” contrastingly, has
the strains of the concert hall, Kuhn’s
focus on providing a pianistic back-
ground for Getz’s tumbling cadenzas.
“When the Sun Comes Out” unfolds
with that effortless ease of a Chopin
ballade which, of course, is not so easily
done, but it feels firmly ensconced in
nature’s corner as a kind of musical
given, just as the sun’s appearance is a
celestial one.
Much is made of Getz’s Lester
Young-isms, but to put it in football
terms, he’s more a hurry-up offense
kind of guy—at least on this night.
Young would let his moments come
to him, waiting for gaps in the music
to develop where he’d then stamp his
identity, cool as you please, but Getz
blows his horn like his notes are punch-
ing holes in the air. More space for his
kind of sun. COLIN FLEMINGLINDA MAY
HAN OH
Aventurine
BiophiliaLinda May Han Oh is the current buzz
on bass, employed by people like Pat
Metheny and Joe Lovano. Her own fifth
album is her most ambitious, com-
bining a jazz quartet, a string quartet
and, on four tracks, a five-person vocal
ensemble.
Oh’s body of work as sideperson,
bandleader, and composer has been
erudite, technical, and meticulous.
Aventurine is even more so. She has
been working and reworking some
of this extremely ornate and intricate“A postbop man who
wants to rebop”: Stan GetzGood as It Getz
On a recently uncovered 58-year-old recording, a
legend is captured in peak live formhe blasted his way through at the Royal
Roost in 1950.
Getz was a footloose artist; adept in
multiple styles, regularly on the go, he
seemed to find a kind of home key on
a stage leading a band. This two-disc
discovery hails from a single night in
late November 1961 at NYC’s Village
Gate, with a different stripe of Getz.
He’s fronting a four-piece, with bassist BOB^ PARENT