Fontessa
The Best Of The Modern Jazz Quartet
Produced by Nesuhi Ertegun
Cover Photo: Lee Friedlander
Cover Design: Boring Eutgemey
Atlantic SD 1546
1970
From the back cover: You might say the title is redundant. The best is the Modern Jazz Quartet, and how does one select the best of the best?
The electing of material for the present album was an inevitable task, given the MJQ's long span as tenants in the Atlantic household and the group's uniquely consistent performance level. "Unique" is not a word to be used loosely, but in the case of this group it may be applied without risk of contradiction.
Not only has the value of the quartet's contributions benn maintained, but the quality and general approach has progressed in a straight line, without the sometimes abrupt changes of format, instrumentation, personnel and style that have marked the careers of most combos and bands during the MJQ's life span.
Almost two decades have passed since john Lewis first began experimenting with the concepts that were to emerge during the middle 1950s under the official MJQ banner. The musicians – Lewis, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath and Connie Kay's predecessor, Kenny Clarke – all were alumni of the Dizzy Gillespie orchestra and, by the same token, products of the bebop generation.
From the moment the Quartet began to germinate in the mind of John Lewis, it represented a fusion of the bop disciplines with small ensemble structural frameworks who delicate textures were unlike anything previously heard in modern jazz.
Outer the years, the quartet took on more and more challenges. Bu attiring the group in conservative suits, Lewis deliberately drew the focus away from any concern for showmanship and comedy, or, at the other extreme, sloppiness and lack of concern for the audience. That jab could furnish material for serious recitals just as surely as classical forms was underscored by the performers onstage demeanor.
Second, the quartet expanded its repertoire to emphasize a point that has been central to Lewis' doctrine throughout his life as a fully concerned musician: Music played by jazz musicians may draw on Europe as well as on America and Africa for its source material, its inspiration and its direction.
Basically, the Lewis credo concerned itself with organization and unity. In a statement of his credo not long after MJQ's debut, he said: "We can broaden the audience for jazz by strengthening oour work with structure. If there is more of a reason for what is going on, there will be more overall sense and therefore more interest for the listener. The improvised and written sections should not take on too much complexity; the total effect must be within the mind's ability to appreciate though the ear."
Perhaps the most significant statement of his beliefs was the declaration that he was inspired by the Count Basie band of the 1930s and '40s, whose integration of ensemble playing "projected and sounded like the spontaneous playing of ideas that were the personal expression of each member of the band, rather than those of the arrangers and composer. This band had some if the greatest jazz soloists exchanging and improvising ideas with and counter to the ensemble and the rhythm section, the whole permeated with the folk-blues element developed to a mist exciting degree. I don't think it is possible to plan or make that kind of thing happen; it is a natural product. All we can do is reach the strive for it." Despite the many new directions in which the quartet has moved, through teaming with other musicians, through Lewis' deep involvement with baroque music and through its own natural evolution, it has remained clear that the original sense of purpose and direction as never been forgotten or discarded.
Contessa is an ideal opening track, offering as it does a virtual synthesis of all the MJQ's very personal virtues in the early years. Connie Kay, a drummer with impeccable credentials (he spent several year touring with Lester Young's quartet and had played in small combos led by Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins and Stan Getz) had taken over the drum duties in 1955, a year before this session. The fragile, delicate character of the gourd was sensitively underlined by Kay. It was in the MJQ that the use of minuscule cymbals, and of the triangle, became valid textural effects rather than novelty gimmicks.
As Lewis commented on the occasion of the recording: "This is a little suite inspired by the Renaissance Commedia dell'Arte. I had particularly in mind their plays with consisted of a very sketchy plot and in which the details, the lines, etc., were improvised. This suite consists first of a short prelude... the first place after the prelude has the character of older jazz, and the improvised parts are by the vibraphone. This piece could perhaps be the character of Harlequin.
The second and third pieces, each representing a newer jazz form that the preceding passage, featured piano and drums and could be said to represent Pierrot and Pantaloon respectively. The suite ends with reprise of the Prelude. The character of Columbine is identified by the three-note main motif.
The Golden Striker is the original quartet version of glittering theme from Lewis' score from the film Sait-On James (One Never Knows), released in the U.S. under the title No Sun In Venice. The composer says it was inspired by the life-size figures revolving and striking the hours on a building near St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice.
Milt Jackson's role as melodic centerpiece of the quartet is brilliantly illustrated here. Though he was well known through earlier accomplishments with Gillespie, Todd Dameron, Thelonious Monk and Woody Herman, Bags around his niche in the MJQ. As I commented in The New Encyclopedia Of Jazz: "His relaxed and subtle sense of timing and his ability to incorporate into his sword elements of an early blues feeling and even of gospel music roots could be more readily discerned as the basic character of the MJQ and its individual members, became defined in the middle and late 1950s."
Bag's Groove is Milt Jackson blues, a thrice-repeated phrase so simple that it many well have been improvised rather than composed. (It goes back a long way; Bags, John, Percy and Kenny Clarke played it, for example, on a session with Lou Donaldson for Blue Note in April 1952.) Here is the MJQ in basic blue. Note Lewis' semi-cannon responses to Milt's statement of the theme, his elliptical fills during the ad lib vibes passages, and Percy Heath's indomitable walking through the Lewis solo.
Heath, like his colleagues, had built a solid reputation before the MJQ became one. Raised in Philadelphia, he came to New York In 1947 with the Howard McGhee Sextet, then worked with Miles Davis, Fats Navarro and J. J. Johnson before spending two years (1950-52) with Gillespie.
Bag's Groove and Django were both recorded at concerts, the former at a Carnegie Hall recital in 1966, the latter during a Scandinavian tour in 1960. Django was Lewis' poignant tribute to the memory of the Belgian-born gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, who died in 1953. Its melodic beauty is so affecting that there is a certain sad irony in its having been written posthumously. Certainly it would have provided a stunning vehicle for Django himself.
Actually, the meat in this sandwich comprises some of the album's best up-tempo blowing choruses by Lewis and Jackson. Even the slow statement of the theme is melancholy without becoming morose. As was the case with The Golden Striker, the composition was recorded in a later version by the MJQ with an all-star jazz orchestra (Atlantic SD 1449).
One of the most successful initiatives undertaken by John Lewis was his amalgamation of the MJQ with a string quartet. This was attempted in 1960 and is represented here by Sketch, embodying the Beaux Arts String Quartet. The instrumentation, which has always appealed to Lewis, was employed again when the Los Angeles String Quartet joined hi for a series of concert appearances, among them a set at the Monterey Jazz Festival in the Far if 1969.
The composition, an unpretentious delight, furnishes are proof that it is possible to write for strings in a manner that enables them to be incorporated without difficulty into a jazz setting.
Pyramid (alias Blues For Junior) is another product of the 1966 Carnegie Hall concert (which, by the way, was a benefit in aid of Lewis' alma mater, the Manhattan School of Music). Built around a Ray Brown line, this starts as a slow blues, through the tension mounts and the meter shifts from 4/4 to 12/8 during Bag's discovery-packed journey through the time-honored changes.
As far as any one album can mirror the character and moods of a unit as adventurous as the Modern Jazz Quartet, this collection of tracks from some of their most memorable dates succeeds in its objective. To this listener it provided a refreshing, intellectual and emotionally stimulating reminder that in a world one sometimes believes to be verging on madness, John Aaron Lewis represents three elements whose preservation I believe essential to the survival of modern music: sanity, serenity and soul. – Leonard Feather
Contessa
Recorded on January 22, 1956
Recording engineers: Rudy Van Gelder & John Kraus
The Golden Striker
From Roger Vadim' film "No Sun In Venice"
Recorded on April 4, 1957
Recording engineer: Tom Dowd
Bag's Groove
Recorded during a benefit concert presented by the Manhattan School of Music at Carnegie Hall, New York, on April 27, 1966
Recording Engineers: Tom Dowd, Phil Kehle & Joe Aktinson
Django
Recored during a concert given in Goteborg, Sweden, in April, 1960
Recording engineer: Gosta Wiholm
Sketch
The Modern Jazz Quartet is joined by the Beaux-Arts String Quartet; Gerald Tarack, 1st violin; Alan Marin, 2nd violin; Alan Marin, 2nd violin; Carl Eberl, viola; Joe Tequila, cello. Conducted by John Lewis.
Recorded on September 23, 1959
Recording engineers: Frank Abby, Earle Brown & Tom Dowd
Pyramid (Blues For Junior)
Recored during a benefit concert presented by the Manhattan School of Music at Carnegie Hall, New York, on April 27, 1966
Recording Engineers: Tom Dowd, Phil Kehle & Joe Aktinson
