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Horace Silver's band


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Guest ariceffron

i am not stoned asshole i am not saying im more sophisticated than you all i am saying i dont listen to shit muscle hard bop shit going on today i listen to mark turner. try actually explanning to me the graces of eric alexender if you can a-hole

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  • 2 weeks later...

The show was a lot of fun. Silver's playing is sparse and quirky. He's not displaying massive technical chops, just having fun with the tunes.

The drummer had some heavy Blakey thing going on, very appropriate for the Messenger's style hard-bop.

All the tunes were mid to up tempo swinging numbers.

The trumpet player / band leader started off uninspired but kicked in the juice later on. One of the trombone players was awesome (the other not so much). The sax players were competent but not particularly inspiring. Bass player was real smooth.

Closing number was, not surprisingly, Song For My Father, which started off as a trio bit after the opening theme and the horn players came back one-by-one. Very cool.

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Caught the group last night for part of the second set at a jam packed Blue Note. It was a nice set, the group played well and the final tune was Song For My Father in which Horace stretched out quite a bit. Horace sounded good, about as I heard him 6 or 7 years ago. The band was good, they were all well versed in the hard bop language, three members of One For All were on the stage, and seemed to really enjoy sharing the stage with one of the masters they all got alot of their language from. No one knocked me out but they all were solid.

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I was at Sunday's 10:30 show as well. I was sitting next to him. A lot of Horace's charts were hand written. Song for My Father was a different arrangement then what we all come to know. I asked Horace if I could have the chart for that tune. He politely said he could give it up since he had jotted down some ideas on the back. Didn't hurt to ask. He did sign one of my CD's.

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Silver purrs: Famed 75-year-old pianist should look backward as well as forward

Thursday, April 29, 2004

BY ZAN STEWART

Star-Ledger Staff

NEW YORK -- Duke Ellington always said his favorite song was the next one, the one he hadn't written. And he always performed new pieces on live dates.

But he appeased the longings of those who loved his many classics, at least by playing several of them each night in a medley, if not in longer versions. It's a concept Horace Silver should consider.

Silver, the still-nimble, 75-year-old jazz composing and piano giant, opened his first New York appearance in many years Tuesday at the Blue Note. (The infrequency of his live shows is due to both intermittent bouts of ill health and his reluctance to travel.)

On his opening set, Silver played only one evergreen: his signature piece, "Song For My Father." The other pieces were drawn from his "new" album, "Rockin' with Rachmaninoff" (Bop City), which he recorded in 1991 and was released last year. As has been his wont, he eschewed such dynamic repertoire songs as the timeless ballad "Peace," the galloping-along "Room 608," the emotive "Señor Blues" and the funky "Filthy McNasty."

To be fair, some of the new tunes were as warm and appealing as his best songs. Take the waltz, "Satchmo's Song," which occasionally recalled Silver's beguiling mid-'60s work, "Pretty Eyes." Or "Rocky Meets the Duke," which employed a favorite Silver gambit: Sway between a Latin rhythmic feeling and a swinging, straight-ahead jazz one.

Other numbers, like "Sunday Mornin' Prayer Meetin'," a fairly corny reworking of his first hit, "The Preacher," didn't quite rise to the Silver standard.

Silver did have a trump card, though, that lifted the level of even the mediocre songs. He brought along, as always, a first-rate band: trumpeter and horn leader Michael Philip Mossman, tenor saxophonists Eric Alexander and Raymond McMorrin, trombonists Steve Davis and Conrad Herwig, bassist John Webber and drummer Joe Farnsworth.

Add to these fellows the piano expressions of the leader -- an artist who in his heyday sweated through a suit in the course of a set and who today still works hard enough to emit trickles of moisture down his countenance -- and the result was a mostly rewarding musical experience.

"Father," a bossa nova with a simple, telling theme, boasted two fine Silver solos, one after the melody reading, another to close the piece. The latter, over an undulating pulse from the impeccable Webber and Farnsworth, included Asian-like chordal statements, little squibs that landed on a ringing note, hard-punched thoughts and more. Alexander also soloed, scoring with his round, glowing tone and sizzling combination of choice notes delivered with commanding technique.

"Rocky Meets the Duke" found the octet sounding like a salsa band here, a surging jazz ensemble there. Mossman soloed with a typical array of high, brassy notes and less fevered lines that had a more song-like quality. Then there was the outstanding Davis, he of fat, warm tone and consistently motoring-along thoughts, and tenorman McMorrin, who sported a round sound, an ability to play crafty ideas at horn bottom and top, and an ear-grabbing fluidity.

Silver accompanied here with typically percussive accents and built his improvisation on tuneful statements that were underpinned by a hearty rhythm. He used sparer ideas as the linchpin of his solo on "Satchmo's Song," though there were bluesy remarks for another flavor. Here Herwig was impressive with his ebullient sound and solid ideas.

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