Collaboration - The Modern Jazz Quartet with Laurindo Almeida

 

Concierto De Aranjuez

Collaboration

The Modern Jazz Quartet

With Laurindo Almeida

Recording Engineer: Ray Hall

Cover Design: Marvin Israel

Supervision: Nesuhi Ertegun

The painting by Juan Gris appears on the cover by courtesy of the publishing house of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Atlantic STEREO 1429

1966

The Modern Jazz Quartet is composed of: John Lewis, piano; Milt Jackson, vibraharp; Percy Heath, bass; Connie Kay, drums. The Quartet is augmented on this LP by guest artist Laurindo Almeida, guitar. Laurindo Almedia appears through the courtesy of Capitol Records, Inc.

From the back cover: Collaboration, as the term is used in music, generally means a sharing in some intellectual creation. Very often, especially in recent years, it has denoted a bringing together of elements not customarily seen or heard together. The joint labors of love in which John Lewis has been involved have included collaborations with symphony orchestras at home and abroad; with an American saxophonist, a Belgian guitarist, a Danish violinist, a German trombonist; with traditionalists, boppers and avant-gardists; with anyone, in short, whose talents have made a strong impression on his singularly perceptive ear.

The teaming of The Modern Jazz Quartet with Laurindo Almeida began as a project for the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival. Until that time the MJQ and Almeida had never worked together; they had been based on opposite coasts and their paths had never crossed.

Almeida at that time was basking in a reputation that had reached him in a curiously indirect manner. Born in Sao Paolo, Brazil, he had come to the U.S. while still in his twen- ties and gained recognition as featured guitarist with the Stan Kenton orchestra. Living near Hollywood, he was accepted among musicians as a master of the classical Spanish concert guitar and among jazzmen as an artist eager to experiment in the blending of jazz and Latin idioms. His first recordings of Brazilian themes with a jazz combo were made in the early 1950s, but it was not until a decade later, when the bossa nova movement upset seismographs throughout the United States, that his name became nationally known through a series of performances of popular songs reshaped to fit the new fad.

John Lewis knew and respected Almeida not simply as a purveyor of Brazilian music, but as a performer with a far broader range of interests. "After we played together in Monterey," Almeida says, "John invited me to tour with the Quartet as guest soloist. We left the United States in February 1964 and stayed together until early June."

"We started in Milan and spent almost a month in Italy and Sicily. We worked in some of the smaller towns where hardly any other American groups had been heard. Later we played in Switzerland, Belgium, France, England, Germany, Scandinavia, Yugoslavia; and also three cities in Spain. I hadn't been in Spain since just before the Civil War, in 1936."

"It was different from so many of these European tours; no rushing. We took four months to play 50 concerts. We enjoyed working together, and had time to really see the countries we visited and get to know their people. The greatest night of the whole tour, for me personally and for the Quartet too I believe, was Paris. The audience there was just magnificent."

"The reaction seemed to indicate that the audiences were pretty well divided between classical and jazz fans. We were able to play whatever we liked. And of course by the time we came home and made this album we knew one another well enough to give the best possible performance of all this material."

With the exception of Foi A Saudade, all the numbers heard here were played by Almeida and the MJQ during their tour. Their repertoire, by composers ranging from 18th Century Germany to 20th Century North and South America, hints at the breadth of their mutual interests.

Silver is a composition characteristic of the jazz-oriented side of John Lewis. There is more than a suggestion of the blues; there are tempo changes, and at one point, going into the slower last movement, there is a tricky retard that called for particularly close listening on the part of all five participants.

Trieste revisits territory that should be familiar to most Lewis students. It was recorded by the regular MJQ per- sonnel in the Lonely Woman album (Atlantic 1381). Though the new version starts almost exactly like the original, many differences develop along the way. There are several curious and fascinating historical overtones. The tango rhythm harks back to Rudolph Valentino and the 1920s, though this is a tango that sometimes swings in a totally contemporary sense. At one point John Lewis' solo evokes the 1930s with touches of Earl Hines and Fats Waller; and Laurindo's interplay with Milt Jackson toward the end may remind students of early jazz guitar that the timbre (and time) of Eddie Lang will never be out of date. Note also the ponticello effects (playing on the bridge of the guitar) added by Laurindo for color.

Valeria is part of the original music Lewis wrote for the motion picture A Milanese Story. It was heard in the original soundtrack album (Atlantic 1388), played by an international group that included a string quartet. The introduction and coda wrap the new performance in a dark, brooding flamenco mood, with Connie Kay's clave effects adding a contrastingly light percussive note. Almeida plays a mainly rhythmic role while Lewis and Bags contribute some of the most propulsive straight-four jazz of the session.

The Bach Fugue In A Minor remains faithful to the composition from the first note almost to the last, but the special requirements of this instrumentation are put to total use as Almeida, Jackson, Lewis and Heath are all involved at one point or another in the weaving of the counterpoint. The qualification in the above phrase "from the first note almost to the last" is an allowance for the little cadenza that comes unexpectedly at the end. Here, for just a moment, we find Bach dipping into Bags' bag. "This is one number," says Laurindo, "that used to bring down the house wherever we played it. Performing it was a great delight for us all."

One Note Samba was first played by Almeida with the Quartet at Monterey. Partly ad lib, partly routined by Lau- rindo, it is the only track in the album not arranged by John Lewis. The dual authenticity of this performance, with Jackson's and Lewis' solos backed by Almeida's comping and Connie Kay's steady bossa nova pulse, demonstrates ideally the marriage of the two musics.

Foi A Saudade (the title means "There was a longing") is a fast bossa nova by Djalma Ferreira, best known as composer of Recado, one of the first bossa novas brought to this country after the tremor hit us. "Europe loves the bossa nova," Almeida reports, "and I am very fond of the writing of Ferreira. He came here from Brazil early in 1964 and now lives not far from me in the San Fernando Valley." Almeida's solo, mainly in single note style, is a highlight. The melody has a flavor that is as much Spanish as Brazilian, perhaps because of the importance of a flat ninth in the second bar (D Flat against a C7), which is not a common element in the typical bossa nova.

Of the Concierto de Aranjuez Almeida says: "This is one part, the adagio movement, of a three-part work by Joaquin Rodrigo, the blind Spanish composer of contemporary music. I met Rodrigo in Los Angeles when Segovia played one of his works. He is a sort of modern Albeniz. By now many jazz lovers know him, of course, because Miles Davis and Gil Evans included this Concierto in their Sketches of Spain."

A sense of stately beauty is evoked both by Rodrigo's thematic structure and by the performance of Almeida and the Quartet. Here the synthesis of talents reaches its zenith of sensitivity, and for Almeida at several points it becomes a technical as well as an emotional triumph. Lewis adapted the orchestration for the Quartet while leaving the guitar part untouched.

"I am very proud of this performance," says Almeida. "It is one of the best things I ever did." His quiet pride is shared by the four men who played this brilliantly conceived and superbly executed work for warmly receptive audiences all over Europe. The Concierto reminds us that this album represents an amalgamation not only of personalities, but of cultures, of nations, of musical emotions.

The meeting of the MJQ and Almeida has been a collaboration in a sense more comprehensive than any that would have been feasible a decade or two ago, when the idioms represented here would have been two or three disparate worlds, total strangers to each other. – LEONARD FEATHER

The Modern Jazz Quartet can also be heard on the following Atlantic LPs: A Quartet Is A Quartet Is A Quartet / The Modern Jazz Quartet, Quartetto di Milano, The Hun- garian Gypsy Quartet (1420); The Sheriff (1414), The Comedy/Guest Artist: Diahann Carroll (1390); European Concert, Volume Two (1386); European Concert, Volume One (1385); Lonely Woman (1381); The Modern Jazz Quartet & Orchestra (1359); Third Stream Music / The Modern Jazz Quartet & Guests: The Jimmy Giuffre Three & The Beaux Arts String Quartet (1345); Pyramid (1325); The Modern Jazz Quartet At Music Inn / Guest Artist: Sonny Rollins (1299); One Never Knows (1284); The Modern Jazz Quartet (1265); The Modern Jazz Quartet At Music Inn / Guest Artist: Jimmy Giuffre (1247); Fontessa (1231).

The European Concert is also available in a two-LP set (2-603).

Silver

Trieste

Valeria

Fugue In A Minor

One Note Samba

For A Saudade

Concierto De Aranjuez