Jazz
Born and raised in Iowa, he was brought up in a family band that played what he has called hillbilly music. Yet shortly after he arrived in Los Angeles in the mid-l950s, he was playing with the strongest of the West Coast modernists, including Art Pepper and Hampton Hawes, to whose recordings he was to make a dramatic return in the '7Os. An association with Paul Bley led to his joining the Ornette Coleman Quartet, yet even at the height of his sojourn in the avant garde, he perform-
ed with such idiosyncratic members of the mainstream as Red Norvo, Pee Wee Russel and Henry Red Allen. His lustrous, strong sound and his telepathic ability to anticipate soloists are steadfast no matter what the context.
In Silence he offers the eternal midnight of the West Coast soul. This was perhaps inevitable, given the presence of Chet Baker and the incomparably wounded lyricism that made him the rage of jazz in 1952, when – having earlier that year jammed with Charlie Parker – he became a member of Gerry Mulligan's pianoless quartet. After leading his own groups m the United States for a while, Baker became a world traveller, attracting audiences all over Europe with the restrained passion that defined his singing as well as his trumpet playing. Though often compared with Miles Davis in the early years, he has long since developed an approach all his own. From the first note of his five-chorus solo on the Charlie Parker blues, "Visa", you know you are in the hands of a masterful and economical soloist. He crackles effortlessly on George Shearing's "Conception,” as expected. More impressive, though, is his ability to probe new angles in Thelonious Monk's much over-played "Round Midnight" and Rogers and Hart’s 'MY FunnY Valentine," with which he has been associated for 35 years.
The Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi is presently unknovm to the international jazz audience, but his performance here will change that. He brings a refined classicism to jazz, as will be evident in his voicing of the chords to Haden's lovely "Silence”...
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Charlie Haden- Bass
Chet Baker- Trumpet, Vocal
Enrico Pieranunzi- Piano
Billy Higgins- Drums
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01. Visa (5:48)
02. Silence (8:45)
03. Echi (6:09)
04. My Funny Valentine (5:39)
05. 'Round About Midnight (11:36)
06. Conception (6:00)
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