TT 208: 80 for Gavin Bryars, Billy Harper, and Al Foster
This week three wonderful musicians celebrated their 80th birthday.
One of the more unique interviews on DTM is the one with Gavin Bryars. Amazing material: I just re-read it and can barely believe I pulled this one off. For Bryars’s birthday I listened to A Man In A Room, Gambling, which was recommended by my friend Tony Creamer. As I say in the interview, this collaboration with Juan Muñoz is impossible to explain quickly, you just have to listen and fall under a spell.
My new literary hero is Mick Herron, and I was pleased to send along Herron’s love of Bryars when this delightful detail appeared in the Guardian.
One of my recurring requests of my readers: Click on the articles you want more of! Richard Scheinin’s celebration of Billy Harper in the New York Times is a perfect example of something everyone in jazz should make sure to click on a few times. We want more coverage of this music at the paper of record, but the only way the editorial board will allow more coverage is if the metrics show that people are interested. (For that matter, more articles by Scheinin would be good, too. Scheinin truly gets it.)
Harper is brilliant, of course, although perhaps not a musician perfectly served by a readily visible discography. For his birthday I listened to an obscure Japanese release from the 70s, Jon and Billy, a nice quintet session with co-leader Jon Faddis, Roland Hanna, George Mraz, and Motohiko Hino. Jazz the way it was meant to be played. Every tenor sax solo is magnificent. Hanna (one of my personal heroes) is quite featured as player and composer.
Al Foster has long been one of my favorites, absolutely in the pantheon of greatest American musicians. There’s a lot of important Foster easy to find on record; among the ones we all return to is the batch of sublime ‘80’s music with Joe Henderson. For many this was the last of a certain kind of truly transcendental straight-ahead jazz, a final continuation of the line of Bird to Trane in a perfected and undiluted form. There’s quite a lot on record and video, where Henderson’s oblique phrases interact with Foster’s chattering left hand in magical fashion. The great bassists include Ron Carter, George Mraz, Rufus Reid, Dave Holland, and others, but for me the most perfect was Charlie Haden, who did nothing much more than thump away agreeably between the two virtuosos. Incredible trio, one of the very peaks in the whole jazz tradition.
However, for Foster’s birthday, I listened to something a little less obvious, the live at the Vanguard trio set Life’s Magic with Steve Kuhn and Ron Carter. I had this one early, and at this point I’m a little ashamed how much I stole outright from Kuhn on this session. Oh well.
Ron and Al is a classic, of course, but of all their wonderful music together on record, I think Life’s Magic is still the best Ron and Al around. Piano trio perfection.
Mr. Foster is at Smoke this weekend, while Billy Hart is at Birdland. They are still here! Come out and support!