ADR

I haven't heard the Hill Mosaic, but I would echo the comments above re: the sound quality of the "Point of Departure" RVG. I was just listening to the RVG of POD the other night and found it to be harshly bright to the point of distracting me from enjoyment of the music. FWIW I was listening on Etymotic ER-4S headphones which have a reputation for nuetrality - ie revealing the true aspects of the recording/remastering.

Damn - I'll have to head back over there and check it out. I read that Manifest was closing and I haven't been back since. I'm glad the store is still in operation and still apparently has such an amazing selection of jazz to choose from. ADR

Check out this Ratliff article from today's NYT. Apparently, the Library of Congress discovered an old Voice of America recording of the Trane with the Monk's trio from the fall of 1957. Ratliff says the recording sounds pretty good: [EDIT: I now see that this has been previously covered in an older thread. I haven't been spending as much time on the jazz boards as I used to and I just missed this story previously: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...topic=18484&hl= Looks like the only new things this article adds to the mix is a description of the sound quality of the recordings (good) and an explanation of how this recording went undiscovered (existence of the recording was known in theory but it couldn't be located previously and was stumbled across by accident)] "You might reasonably think that the recorded past of American music has been mapped out - that after all the academic books and scholared-up CD reissues, we know what's between A and Z. Of the important works, anyway. Ephemera will always keep rolling in, intensifying the reds and golds of the historical picture, broadening the context. But now this: tapes bearing nearly a full hour of the Thelonious Monk quartet with John Coltrane, found at the Library of Congress in January. The library made the announcement this month. The tapes come from a concert at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 29, 1957, a benefit for a community center. The concert was recorded by the Voice of America, the international broadcasting service, and the tapes also include sets by the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, Ray Charles with a backing sextet, the Zoot Sims Quartet with Chet Baker, and the Sonny Rollins Trio. (Newspaper accounts of the concert indicate that Billie Holiday appeared as well, though she is not on the Voice of America tapes.) But it is Monk with Coltrane that constitutes the real find. That band existed for only six months in 1957, mostly through long and celebrated runs at the East Village club the Five Spot. During this period, Coltrane fully collected himself as an improviser, challenged by Monk and the discipline of his unusual harmonic sense. Thus began the 10-year sprint during which he changed jazz completely, before his death in 1967. The Monk quartet with Coltrane did record three numbers in a studio in 1957, but remarkably little material, and only with fairly low audience-tape fidelity, is known to exist from the Five Spot engagement. The eight and a half Monk performances found at the Library of Congress, by contrast, are professionally recorded, strong and clear; you can hear the full dimensions of Shadow Wilson's drum kit and Ahmed Abdul-Malik's bass. It is certainly good enough for commercial release, though none has yet been negotiated. On the tapes, Monk is Monk, his pianistic style basically formed at least 10 years before, with its sudden drawls and rhythmic hesitations. He lets Coltrane solo at length with very little accompaniment; the saxophonist plays rows and rows of original licks and runs, built with blizzards of 16th notes. The notable exception is Coltrane's solo on "Blue Monk." Through 10 blues choruses, he builds an even crescendo of logic, letting down his guard and relying less on his stock phrases. (The other songs on the tape, from the evening's two sets, are "Monk's Mood," "Evidence," "Crepuscule With Nellie," "Nutty," "Epistrophy," "Bye-Ya," "Sweet and Lovely" and a truncated second version of "Epistrophy.") The music was discovered by accident, during the routine practice of transferring tape from the Library of Congress's Voice of America collection to digital sound files for preservation. Larry Appelbaum, a studio engineer, supervisor and jazz specialist at the library, said that he was given a batch of about 100 tapes for digitization one day in January and looked to see what was there; among them he noticed a brown cardboard box for a 7½-inch reel, marked in pencil "sp. Event 11/29/57 carnegie jazz concert (#1)," with no names on it. It piqued his interest, and one of the boxes holding the Carnegie tapes - there were eight in all - said "T. Monk." "It got my heart racing," Mr. Appelbaum said. (None of the tape boxes mentioned Coltrane.) No bootleg recordings of the concert are known to exist, because even though it was recorded, it was not broadcast. The Coltrane specialist Lewis Porter knew of the tape's possible existence and inquired about it years ago, but after an initial search yielded nothing, Mr. Appelbaum said, he forgot about it completely. He was surprised to finally find it, of course, but his sense of surprise has been worn down over the years. "There's always more," Mr. Appelbaum said sagely, in a recent interview in his recording laboratory at the Library of Congress's recorded sound division. He repeated the phrase so often during the afternoon that it became a mantra. The Library of Congress holds the country's largest collection of sound recordings, and jazz of course forms only a tiny part of it. The full extent of several essential collections is thoroughly cataloged; they include everything ever recorded at the library's Coolidge Auditorium, including T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost and Robert Lowell reading their work, chamber music performances by the Budapest String Quartet, and Jelly Roll Morton singing and spieling for eight hours in 1938. All of John and Alan Lomax's famous field recordings are kept there as well. But among the collections still being cataloged are the 50,000 Voice of America tapes, which for 40 years have been housed in a dark, climate-controlled room. The tapes constitute a valuable history of radio, and of music in New York. (The Voice of America also recorded every Newport Jazz Festival from 1955, its second year, to 1976, four years after the festival relocated from Rhode Island to New York City.) The cataloging has proceeded gradually, with first priority given to the most historically important and most physically fragile material. Michael Gray, librarian and archivist at the Voice of America, which still operates out of Washington, confirms that in 1957, and for a long time after that, the broadcast service had access to the Carnegie Hall Recording Company's services. The Voice of America was allowed to record performances at Carnegie Hall free of charge, without paying the hall or the musicians, as long as it broadcast only overseas; this was regarded as public diplomacy through music. Of course, some musicians would not consent to be recorded, which is probably why there is no Billie Holiday on the tape. Besides satisfying jazz fans, the discovery of the Monk tape has Gino Francesconi, Carnegie Hall's archivist since 1986, excited by the idea that much more of the hall's past may be preserved than he thought. "We knew that Voice of America recorded here," he said. "But we didn't have any formal documentation of it, and it's fantastic to know that they've discovered this." There's always more." Man - I hope this gets commercially released soon.

Those are some cool ass t-shirts. Gotta get myself at least 2 or 3. ADR

Don't forget Anderson's "Two Days in April" a double disc on the Eremite label. In addition to some great playing by Anderson it also features Kidd Jordan, a great tenor saxophonist from New Orleans who is even more overlooked than Anderson. The kicker is the rhythm section - William Parker and Hamid Drake. Need I say more.

Trane: "Complete 1961 Live at the Village Vanguard" Miles: "Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel" Mingus: "Live at Antibes" Bill Evans: "Sunday at Village Vanguard/Waltz for Debby" Cecil Taylor: "Nefertiti: The Beautiful One has Come" DKV Trio: "Live at Wells and Chicago" Fred Anderson: "Two Days in April" Ornette Coleman: "At the Golden Circle" Jimmy Giuffre: "Emphasis, Stuttgart 1961" Keith Jarrett: "Complete Live at the Blue Note" Masada: "Live in Sevilla" Brad Mehldau: "Art of the Trio IV: Back at the Vanguard" Monk: "Live at the It Club: Complete" Wes Montgomery: "Full House" Bird: "Complete Savoy Live Performances" Greg Osby: "Banned in New York" Sonny Rollins: "Our Man in Jazz" Horace Tapscott: "The Dark Trees Vol.s I & II" Steve Lacy: "Morning Joy" Gary Bartz: "There Goes the Neighborhood"

Ouch...... Do you really dislike Potter that much JSngry? If so, why?.....if you don't mind my asking (I respect your opinion).

Damn - it must be good then. The Lovano disc is amazing. I'll have to listen to "Eternal" some time very soon. ADR

Chris Potter - for his monumental chops and incredible expressiveness on the tenor. Ellery Eskelin - for leading one of the most interesting and groundbreaking working bands of the past 15 years (IMO) in his trio with Parkins and Black.

If were talking strictly for technical ability and sound on the instrument - I would have to go with Kenny Garrett. He has such incredible chops and an instantly recognizable individual sound on the alto. However, if we are talking all around musicianship in terms of composition, ability to recruit and lead a stong working band with a distinct group "sound", experimentation with interesting styles and forms, etc. - I would have to go with Osby. The directions Osby has taken his band in, in recent years is just infinitely more interesting than what KG has been up to ("Standard of Language" was a keeper but compare "Simply Said" and "Happy People"with Osby's output during the same period). Until fairly recently Osby was also able to nurture and keep a monumental talent (Jason Moran) in his working band and harness his distinctive approach into his group sound. KG has not been able to maintain anyone of similar stature and influence in his working band for an extended period of time (although Kenny Kirkland and Tain were a burning band while they lasted with KG). ADR

The Dude abides........

Nice to see such a quality thread about one of my all time favorite musicians. Not was Joe phenomenally talented, he also seemed like a humble and caring human being.

From the end of August 2002 to January 2003 I lost about 50 pounds. I went from about 205 pounds to 155 (I'm about 6'0 with a slender build). I did it by just obsessively watching the amount of calories and fat grams I consumed every day. I tried to keep my fat grams below 15 grams/day and my calorie intake to about 1,750 to 2,000/day. In order to make sure I stuck with this diet I allowed myself one meal a week where I ate whatever I wanted. It's what you do day in and day out that matters as far as weight loss/gain and that way I had an incentive - something to look forward to. Since January of 2003 I have mostly maintained my weight loss although in the past 6 months I have slowly gained about 10 pounds back. I'm now about 165-170 - still well below my pre-weight loss high of 205-210 pounds.

"High Brow": Atlantic Monthly Wilson Quarterly "Middle Brow": Time Sports Illustrated "Trashy Mind Candy": Entertainment Weekly

Good call on the Bill Stewart BNs. "Telepathy" is an amazingly good album. While "Snide Remarks" is not quite as good IMO, it is still worthy of re-issue and it actually has greater "star" appeal as it features Joe Lovano on tenor sax. I am fortunate enough to have found used copies of both of these albums - one on Ebay and on in a brick and mortar (now sadly out of business) here in Charlotte. ADR