TT 352: Technically Acceptable

out now on Blue Note Records

Blue Note CD no. 2 Technically Acceptable is now on all platforms and available from all outlets! I'll be talking about this music in my feeds for the next little bit. Thanks for listening.

Above is the artwork from my old friend Shannon Cronin. It is on the inside of the CD booklet and goes a good way to warming up the whole package. Shannon’s art “ties the room together.”

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The title of the song and the album is once again from a movie, TV show, or book I like, a tradition that goes back to 2003, when Reid Anderson suggested These Are the Vistas for the Columbia debut of The Bad Plus.

THESE ARE THE VISTAS = dialogue from American Movie

THE PURITY OF THE TURF = P.G. Wodehouse short story

TEMPORARY KINGS = Anthony Powell novel

COSTUMES ARE MANDATORY = dialogue from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

TECHNICALLY ACCEPTABLE = ?

Answer: Lee Child uses the phrase a few times in the novels starring Jack Reacher, for example in 61 Hours:

"Technically acceptable, they would have said, which was the only standard military engineers understood."

I don't expect military engineers to automatically groove on my new Blue Note disc, and indeed, the full context of this particular Lee Child sentence is impossible to explain without giving away the surreal climax of 61 Hours. For that matter, none of the above album titles connect to the sources in a literal way. In this case, somehow the phrase was appropriate for the mid-tempo rhythm changes tune I was writing at the time, and of course I get to announce on the mic: “The next song is ‘Technically Acceptable.’”

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One of the highlights of the record is the theremin solo on "'Round Midnight" performed by Rob Schwimmer. This is the debut theremin solo in the Blue Note catalog...about time! (Monk’s own first recording of "‘Round Midnight” was for the same label, Blue Note, way back in 1947. )–

Rob has been thrilling audiences in Mark Morris’s Pepperland with a gigantic theremin feature on “A Day in the Life,” which in some ways is the apotheosis of the whole show. Our duo on “‘Round Midnight” tries to recreate some of that magic in the studio. I really like this track.

I noticed that Ornette Coleman often writes original material as an introduction to a familiar theme (like on his famous version of “Embraceable You”), so that’s why the short piano opening to “‘Round Midnight” is new: