Harold Mabern Trio – Somewhere Over The Rainbow (2018) [SACD / Venus Records – VHGD-300]

Harold Mabern Trio - Somewhere Over The Rainbow (2018)

Title: Harold Mabern Trio – Somewhere Over The Rainbow (2018)
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO

A masterpiece showcasing the Mabern style at its finest, from swinging renditions of the great composer Harold Arlen’s standards to beautiful ballad performances, all delivered in a splendidly luxurious mood! SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW Harold Mabern Trio

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1 min read

Harold Mabern Trio – Kiss Of Fire (2002) [Japan 2015] [SACD / Venus Records – VHGD-69]

Harold Mabern Trio - Kiss Of Fire (2002) [Japan 2015]

Title: Harold Mabern Trio – Kiss Of Fire (2002) [Japan 2015]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Harold Mabern is a hard bop, post-bop and soul jazz pianist and composer. He is described in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings as “one of the great post-bop pianists.” On this release, Mabern is joined by Nat Reeves on bass, Joe Farnsworth on drums, and Eric Alexander on tenor sax.

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1 min read

Harold Mabern Trio – Fantasy (2004) [Japan 2017] [SACD / Venus Records – VHGD-243]

Harold Mabern Trio - Fantasy (2004) [Japan 2017]

Title: Harold Mabern Trio – Fantasy (2004) [Japan 2017]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Harold Mabern was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1936 and spent some of his early years in Chicago before moving to New York in the early 1960s. There he began to work with Lionel Hampton, Art Farmer’s Jazztet and J.J. Johnson. Mabern has accompanied many vocalists including Joe Williams, Sarah Vaughan, Dakota Staton, Irene Reid and Arthur Prysock. He’s also worked with Roland Kirk, Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Roy Haynes, Wes Montgomery, Clark Terry, Billy Harper, Joe Newman and George Coleman. On this record, he’s joined by Joe Farnsworth and Dwayne Burno.

Fusing the always fashionable bop/funk school with the classic American Songbook, Harold Mabern remains extremely relevant: younger rock bands and music writers should listen to this musical giant, as their music will surely improve if they do. He has a big and commanding style, with tremendous appeal. Discover the big hands and richly melodic, ringing sound of Harold Mabern for yourself.

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1 min read

Harold Mabern Trio – Falling In Love With Love (2003) [Japan 2017] [SACD / Venus Records – VHGD-198]

Harold Mabern Trio - Falling In Love With Love (2003) [Japan 2017]

Title: Harold Mabern Trio – Falling In Love With Love (2003) [Japan 2017]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Harold Mabern and his piano join together with George Mraz, bass, and Joe Farnsworth, drums, to compile a 10-track SACD full of jazz’s favorite staples from Harold Arlen, Michael Leonard and many more. A great piano trio album full of driving swing feel, groove and dynamism.

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1 min read

Harold Mabern – Misty (2007) [Japan 2017] [SACD / Venus Records – VHGD-222]

Harold Mabern - Misty (2007) [Japan 2017]

Title: Harold Mabern – Misty (2007) [Japan 2017]
Genre: Classical
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Harold Mabern is a hard bop, post-bop and soul jazz pianist and composer. He is described in The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings as “one of the great post-bop pianists”. This album has been released on the Japanese VENUS label.

Harold Mabern is one of many American jazz artists who have found a lucrative market for their recordings in Japan. This solo piano date is one of his very best efforts, opening with a hard-driving take of Bobby Timmons’ hard bop masterpiece “Dat Dere,” then following it with a thoughtful rendition George Shearing’s unjustly obscure ballad “She.” The pianist’s breezy hard bop treatment of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” makes one forget that it began life as a bittersweet ballad. Mabern’s upbeat performance of Quincy Jones’ “Wail Bait” provokes memories of Bud Powell when he was healthy. Erroll Garner’s “Misty” has long been one of the most requested tunes in night club settings, though Mabern’s percussive setting is quite different from the usual low-key approach. Mabern also includes a pair of originals, including his brisk “Mabern’s Boogie, which would have been right at home during the genre’s heyday, along with his dazzling, hard-charging “Wayne’s Blues.”

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2 min read

Hans Vonk, Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra, Male Chorus of the Netherlands Radio Choir – Johannes Brahms: The Final Sessions (2005) [SACD / PentaTone classics – PTC 5186 045]

Hans Vonk, Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra, Male Chorus of the Netherlands Radio Choir - Johannes Brahms: The Final Sessions (2005)

Title: Hans Vonk, Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra, Male Chorus of the Netherlands Radio Choir – Johannes Brahms: The Final Sessions (2005)
Genre: Classical
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Pentatone offer this volume as a premature termination of their survey of Dutch composer Hans Vonk’s work. Perhaps he was best-known in Europe, but his career had international elements as well. His conducting style was deeply rooted in the central European traditions, but his personal credo was service to the composer and to music rather than service to his conductor’s ego. It is astonishing to learn that these final sessions with his old orchestra were conducted from a wheel-chair, and with gestures limited by his disease. Clearly all the musicians were fully aware that his courage at the sessions in August 2003 probably meant the end of his conducting career, and possibly of his life. They responded magnificently. Brahms was one of his great loves and he certainly could create a real Brahmsian sound, but with much more clarity than managed by many other conductors. Brahms has gained a reputation as an indifferent orchestrator, as had Schumann before him. But both of them were used to very different bands compared to our modern symphony orchestras; smaller, with gut strings as well as quieter and more characterful woodwind and brass. Vonk, as demonstrated on this disc, was one of the few modern conductors to balance his orchestras to allow the wonderful details of Brahms’ scores to come through. Here he was also aided by the first-class, truthful and beautifully balanced DSD 5.0 sound for which Pentatone is famed. I have never heard such rich inner detail in all of these works. The Netherlands Radio Symphony play magnificently for him. Strength of purpose, certainty in the passage of tension to relaxation in the structure of the composition, and deeply felt lyricism are the features of these interpretations. Justly so, as Brahms himself was the perfect blender of classicism with romanticism. There are many passages in the Academic Festival Overture and St Anthony Variations which could almost have been written by Beethoven. Both works are given excellent performances which remain in one’s mind long after the disc stops spinning. They are, of course, essential companions to the four symphonies. Both end in triumph and joy and are uplifting indeed. Brahms’ setting of several verses from Goethe’s ‘Winter Journey through the Hartz Mountains’ became his three-part Alto Rhapsody. It has long been a favourite of mine, as it moves from the contralto’s loneliness of unrequited love through lamenting to receiving the sweet balm of consolation. While she may not be Christa Ludwig in her prime, Yvonne Naef here gives a beautifully dark-toned and deeply emotional account. She is splendidly supported by the men of the Netherlands Radio Choir, whose Chief Conductor is the almost legendary Simon Halsey. I have never heard the inner parts of the chorus so clearly depicted, thanks both to Vonk and Pentatone. I have only one gripe about this issue: the absence of the vital texts for the Alto Rhapsody from the insert. I suspect that Vonk himself might be with me in administering this rebuke, especially as the space was taken up with material about himself! While it may appear that this disc is a memorial worth only one playing, it is instead a set of beautiful readings of three essential Brahms works, fully in the Central European tradition. Moreover, it is not marmorial, but a real ‘feel-good’ and life-enhancing disc. What better memorial could a conductor have? Copyright © 2008 John Miller and ~sa-cd.net

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4 min read

Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Beethoven: The Complete Piano Concertos (2017) [SACD / Challenge Classics – CC 72763]

Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend - Beethoven: The Complete Piano Concertos (2017)

Title: Hannes Minnaar, The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Jan Willem de Vriend – Beethoven: The Complete Piano Concertos (2017)
Genre: Classical
Format: DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Here is the box containing Beethoven’s five Piano Concertos performed by Hannes Minnaar and The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jan Willem de Vriend. So far two single volumes had been issued: while the one including Concertos nos. 4 & 5 was acclaimed by Gramophone as: “beginning a Beethoven cycle with the Fourth and Fifth Concertos is a bold move but one that pays off in all sorts of ways”, the same magazine welcomed the disc with Concertos nos. 1 & 2 for “its pleasing mix of finesse and drive”. Now the box also offers the so far unissued Concerto #3. Despite the very large number of recordings already made of this musical corpus, Minnaar and de Vriend have proved that they have something new and totally their own to say about this collection of masterpieces. And it is indeed the peculiar blend of sheer energy and esprit de finesse that can be identified as the distinctive brand or these recordings.

Pianist Hannes Minnaar has made a name for himself as a soloist with three albums to his name, member of the award-winning Van Baerle Trio, and most recently winner of the Dutch Music Award in 2016, the highest available from the Dutch Government. This means being in a safe pair of hands when it comes to the solo parts for Beethoven’s five Piano Concertos. These recordings have already appeared as individual CDs aside from the Third Concerto which, being too short in duration for a physical release, has been download-only until now. There is an interesting aspect of this recording hidden at the back of the booklet. Along with the selection of a Steinway & Sons concert grand by the soloist there is mention of the efforts made by tuner Gerben Bisschop to “prepare the historical tuning of the instrument.” This is not further clarified, but presumably implies a move from equal temperament to a more old-fashioned meantone tuning. You probably wouldn’t notice much difference here in comparison to alternative modern-piano recordings, though it I had to make a call on the character of the piano in relationship to the orchestra then it seems just a little warmer in tone. The trend for piano sound in recent years has been for sparkly brilliance, and this extra touch with regard to the preparation of the piano lends an extra waft of expressive nuance to the whole. That exposed first chord at the beginning of the Fourth Concerto is certainly interestingly textured.

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3 min read

Hank Mobley – Workout (1962) [APO Remaster 2011] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CBNJ 84080 SA]

Hank Mobley - Workout (1962) [APO Remaster 2011]

Title: Hank Mobley – Workout (1962) [APO Remaster 2011]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

This is one of the best-known Hank Mobley recordings, and for good reason. Although none of his four originals (“Workout,” “Uh Huh,” “Smokin’,” “Greasin’ Easy”) caught on, the fine saxophonist is in top form. He jams on the four tunes, plus “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” with an all-star quintet of young modernists — guitarist Grant Green, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones — and shows that he was a much stronger player than his then-current boss Miles Davis seemed to think.

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1 min read

Hank Mobley – No Room For Squares (1963) [APO Remaster 2010] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CBNJ 84149 SA]

Hank Mobley - No Room For Squares (1963) [APO Remaster 2010]

Title: Hank Mobley – No Room For Squares (1963) [APO Remaster 2010]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Why any critic would think that Hank Mobley was at the end of his creative spark in 1963 – a commonly if stupidly held view among the eggheads who do this for a living – is ridiculous, as this fine session proves. By 1963, Mobley had undergone a transformation of tone. Replacing the scintillating airiness of his late-’50s sides was a harder, more strident, almost honking one, due in part to the influence of John Coltrane and in part to Mobley’s deeper concentration on the expressing blues feeling in his trademark hard bop tunes. The CD version of this album sets the record straight, dropping some tunes form a session months earlier and replacing them with alternate takes of the title cut and “Carolyn” for historical integrity, as well as adding “Syrup and Biscuits” and “Comin’ Back.” Mobley assembled a crack band for this blues-drenched hard-rollicking set made up of material written by either him or trumpeter Lee Morgan. Other members of the ensemble were pianist Andrew Hill, drummer Philly Joe Jones, and bassist John Ore. The title track, which opens the set, is a stand-in metaphor for the rest: Mobley’s strong and knotty off-minor front-line trading fours with Hill that moves into brief but aggressive soloing for he and Morgan and brings the melody back, altered with the changes from Hill. On Morgan’s “Me ‘n’ You,” an aggressive but short bluesed-out vamp backed by a mutated samba beat, comes right out of the Art Blakey book of the blues and is articulated wonderfully by Mobley’s solo, which alternates between short, clipped phrases along the line of the changes and longer trill and ostinatos where the end of a musical line is dictated by his breath rather than a chord change. Morgan is in the pocket of the blue shades, coloring the ends of his lines with trills and short staccato bursts, warping them in Hill’s open, chromatic voicings. All eight cuts here move with similar fluidity and offer a very gritty and realist approach to the roots of hard bop. Highly recommended.

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2 min read

Hank Mobley – Mobley’s Message (1956) [Analogue Productions Remaster 2012] [SACD / Analogue Productions – CPRJ 7061 SA]

Hank Mobley - Mobley's Message (1956) [Analogue Productions Remaster 2012]

Title: Hank Mobley – Mobley’s Message (1956) [Analogue Productions Remaster 2012]
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Saxophonist Hank Mobley’s 1956 date for Prestige, Mobley’s Message, is an often overlooked gem of the era. Joining Mobley here is an all-star cast of musicians including trumpeter Donald Byrd, alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, pianist Barry Harris, bassist Doug Watkins, and drummer Art Taylor. Essentially a high-energy blowing session, the album features some stellar bop-oriented improvisation and is well worth seeking out.

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1 min read