Andrew Hill--composer

[bertrand]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Cal Massey left behind a really solid body of work, but only had one record under his own name. He had to depend others recording his work, and although he had some amazingly heavy hitters doing that.. they all had their own careers and music's to take care of.

Archie Shepp probably(?) was the most regular advocate, but... 

I was surprised Blue Note never put together a 'Blue Note plays Cal Massey' compilation CD. They did a Beatles one.

Yes, it is too bad Cal rarely got to record his music but he was well served by the heavy hitters. Is it possible they did not quite play it the way he intended it to be played? Maybe. But when you have Wayne tearing it up on Assunta like he does, I can't imagine it played any better. Whew.

Zane Massey has a project called Cosmic Surf Club that mostly plays Cal's music. I doubt that is the way Cal intended it to be played 😀

[Milestones]

Conrad Herwig has done many albums based on single composers--doing it with the "latin side" method: Coltrane, Miles, Shorter, Silver.  Maybe Hill and Mingus are on the horizon.  

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, bertrand said:

Yes, it is too bad Cal rarely got to record his music but he was well served by the heavy hitters.

He was, but the lack of a leader presence kinda leaves a diffuse picture of who "Cal Massey" was, doesn't it? It's almost he was a songwriter, not a singular composer.  

[bertrand]

Have you heard the Black Liberation Movement Suite, a release that Fred Ho supervise? Definitely highlights Cal as a composer.

[Holy Ghost]

Reminding myself, what an incredible artist he is (still is), and what an impact he has had on my musical enrichment. Still blows my mind to this day:

[Holy Ghost]

2 hours ago, Holy Ghost said:

Reminding myself, what an incredible artist he is (still is), and what an impact he has had on my musical enrichment. Still blows my mind to this day:

But I am ahead of myself, now:

 

 

[Rooster_Ties]

Just happened to listen to Dance With Death on my hour-long walk to work this morning.  My “Billy Harper” Pandora station randomly served up the last DWD track to me, so then I streamed the entire thing.

The best thing about Hill — especially his entire first run on Blue Note — is how even after 30 years of listening to Hill, even now I can’t anticipate where individual solos are going from moment to moment (unless I can remember where they’re going).

Nothing obvious, and his music (and the solos of his collabators) are almost entirely bereft of clichés.  Hill is almost always like a breath of fresh air.

[Pim]

2 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Just happened to listen to Dance With Death on my hour-long walk to work this morning.  My “Billy Harper” Pandora station randomly served up the last DWD track to me, so then I streamed the entire thing.

The best thing about Hill — especially his entire first run on Blue Note — is how even after 30 years of listening to Hill, even now I can’t anticipate where individual solos are going from moment to moment (unless I can remember where they’re going).

Nothing obvious, and his music (and the solos of his collabators) are almost entirely bereft of clichés.  Hill is almost always like a breath of fresh air.

 Beautiful and very accurate description of Andrew Hill. What makes it even better imo is that despite its unpredictability it still all makes sense and there’s a solid base of structure and logic in it all. 

[Coda]

I wish there was a like button, there's so much goodness in this thread.

[Eric]

1 hour ago, Coda said:

I wish there was a like button, there's so much goodness in this thread.

👍

[Rooster_Ties]

As much as I like Andrew’s music — if I’m being honest, it’s really probably more that I really love rediscovering Andrew’s recordings — WHICH, nearly every time I listen to them (whether it’s been a couple of months, or a year since I’ve listened to a particular album), it’s almost like hearing most of them for the very first time.

Not exactly, and less so for Black Fire (which I’ve probably heard the most often) — but for practically all of the rest Andrew’s catalog, it’s a little almost like don’t know these recordings, no matter how many times I’ve heard them before.

They’re (almost) always ‘new’ to me — or hearing them is more like hearing them for the first time, to a degree unlike nearly anything else in the entire Blue Note catalog.

I might (almost) love most of Andrew’s BN output — but what I really love is how they’ve kept me guessing with their unpredictability, for 30 years this year. I got the Hill Mosaic big-box in 1995, my second-only Mosaic purchase, which I really only got because of all the sidemen on it — and I’d only ever heard Point of Departure before that, and didn’t really know what to make of it, neither loving nor hating it back then.  And it also took me a solid 5 years(!) to even half-digest the Hill big box.

All that said, I also don’t see him as some monumental jazz ‘auteur’. Every musician I’ve ever talked to who played with Hill for any length of time has described some experience similar to having questions (lots of questions) for Hill about what to do here, or the meaning of vague charts (to put it charitably) — nearly every time, Hill’s reply was a quiet/tepid “what do you think? He seemed like the LEAST assertive ‘leader’ in all of jazz.

And yet, one could perhaps argue Hill’s actual approach wasn’t all that different than Miles — hire great and creative sidemen, and leverage their strengths. (And Hill probably did arguably ‘write’ more in his process, than Miles did in his.)

Anyway, I love Hill’s Hill’s BN’s — but largely because of the way they seem to almost force “continual rediscovery” — at least in my case.