Stereophile – August 2019

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Audiophile Essentials

EDITOR

CD PACKAGE

stereophile.com n August2019 127

RECORD REVIEWS

MILES DAVIS QUINTET

Miles Smiles

Miles Davis, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax;

Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass;

Tony Williams, drums.

Columbia/Mobile Fidelity MFSL2-486 (2 45rpm

LPs). 1966/2019. Teo Macero, prod.; Frank Laico,

eng.; Mark Wilder, reissue eng. AAA. TT: 41:22.

PERFORMANCE

SONICS

With Miles Smiles, audiophile reissue

house Mobile Fidelity completes its

series of all six studio albums by Miles

Davis’s “second great quintet,” each

title mastered at 45rpm—most of them

(including this one) from the original

analog tapes—spread out across two

pristine slabs of 180gm vinyl. Miles

Smiles is the best of the six, the session

where Miles and his band of young

upstarts locked into mind meld, fusing

elements of his earlier music—the pop

balladry and hard bop soul of his mid-

’50s quintet, the modal moodiness of

Kind of Blue—and taking them in a new

direction, influenced by the free jazz

of Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy

but keeping the structure intact, skat-

ing along the edges but never sliding

over. It’s also the session where Wayne

Shorter emerged as a front-line co-

equal—at least as much as John Coltrane

had been in the first great quintet—and

a prominent composer (he wrote three

of the six tracks here), layering complex

harmonies and shifting rhythms over

sharp-hooked tunes. The sound quality

is superb—much better than Columbia’s

original pressing. (Teo Maceo did a lot

of fiddling in the postproduction mix;

for MoFi, Mark Wilder returned to

the original four-track tapes, which are

in excellent shape, and did only slight

tweaking.) You can hear, better than

ever, the propulsive flair and delicate

subtleties of Tony Williams’ drum

work and his interplay with Herbie

Hancock’s Ravelian tone-clusters on

piano and Ron Carter’s agile anchoring

on bass.— Fred Kaplan

ROB SCHWIMMER

Heart of Hearing

Rob Schwimmer, piano, theremin, Haken Continuum.

Sunken Heights Music SHM 2018 (CD). 2018.

Rob Schwimmer, prod.; Ryan Streber, Andy Taub,

Max Ross, et al., engs. DAD. TT: 51:08.

PERFORMANCE

SONICS

Rob Schwimmer has been toiling in

the worlds of pop, rock, jazz, theater,

and other musical fields for 40 years,

playing keyboards for Wayne Shorter,

Simon & Garfunkel, the Klezmatics,

and dozens of others in the spaces

in between. This is his second solo

album (his first in a decade), and

it’s a stunner, a medley of originals,

riffs on classics (Chopin, Obukhov),

soundtracks (the theme from Vertigo),

and a string of what he calls “Hallu-

cinations on Popular Songs” (“In the

Wee Small Hours of the Morning”

segueing out of “‘Round Midnight”;

“The Sound of Silence” transposed

into minor keys). It’s all mesmerizing,

haunting, flush with drama and wit

while skirting postmodern whimsy.

Schwimmer immerses himself in

whatever genre he’s traversing or

transcending. Across all realms, he’s a

virtuoso—his harmonies are inven-

tive, his melodic lines infectious, his

dynamics subtly disruptive. On Kurt

Weill’s “Lost in the Stars,” he scans

the tune on the theremin—on Obuk-

hov’s Prelude No.1, he does the same

with the Haken Continuum—while

accompanying himself on piano. On

the final track, an uptempo original

called “In the Company of Friends,”

he heads a trio, with bassist Jay An-

derson and drummer Jeff Hirschfeld,

as if to say, “I can do this, too.” Finally,

though the 17 tracks were recorded

by six engineers in four studios, the

sound—mixed and mastered by Rob

Friedman—is superb. The piano

heaves the proper mix of percussion

and bloom; his slightest filigrees burst

through in all their shade and detail.

The theremin and Continuum are

magical.— Fred Kaplan

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