Monday, August 30, 2021

Ida Landsberg - Jazz Sessions

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2018
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 39:54
Size: 92,6 MB
Art: Front

(4:57)  1. Blue Moon
(3:26)  2. They Can't Take That Away from Me
(3:34)  3. Angel Eyes
(4:20)  4. Fly Me to the Moon
(3:40)  5. From This Moment On
(4:09)  6. Close to You
(3:42)  7. How High the Moon
(3:43)  8. Cry Me a River
(3:54)  9. Don't Take Your Love from Me
(4:25) 10. Night and Day

Music is in my life since I can think.In my case music always had been present but for a long time it wasn’t at the centre of my thinking and activities yet. It was more an accompaniment of every of my daily actions, an accessory, an atmosphere, a song to sing or an open ear for sounds and noises. I always had a very sensible ear that hated rumors and couldn’t tolerate notes that weren’t perfectly clean. Who loved high and clear voices and memorized melodies quickly. I didn’t grow up in an artist environment even though my grand-grandmother, from which I had my name Ida, was a sculpturist and lived surrounded by famous 19th Century painters in Kleinmachnow just outside Berlin. One of her friends were Max Liebermann. I know her only from my father’s tellings.

I passed my childhood and adolescence by studying languages, literature and science, but music was my everyday companion, my friend, my breathe. That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t have been in constant contact with music making. In my earliest childhood, I sang on my grandmother’s balcony and the neighbors listened to me. At the age of 6 I started to play piano, to sing in a church choir and to be part of a children dance theatre.  Also my family enjoyed music. My grandmother played piano, my father accordeon and my mother guitar. They wanted to give us a good musical education. My mother was the one who raise my love for classical music as she took me to the opera house since I was a child. I knew all the arias of Mozart’s “Magical Flute” by heart and sang them the whole day long. She was also the one who forced me to practice piano everyday when I was about to quit at the age of 13. I couldn’t be any more thankful that she insisted.

I was very active at school performances. After a long and intense 70s musical rebel period in my adolescence at the sound of the The Doors, Janis Joplin and the Beach Boys, I discovered jazz music which would have been my strongest passion. Charlie Parker and Dave Brubeck had become my new heroes, Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald my idols.  Soon the desire of letting music be a central part of my life became concrete. I was admitted to the Berlin University of Fine Arts and studied music pedagogy there until I left Germany for a student exchange program. My time at the UdK was one of the greatest I can remember. I had a female a cappella trio, sang in different choirs and we made plenty of University productions. It was a busy and fun period. http://www.idalandsberg.net/about-me/

Jazz Sessions

Geri Allen, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette - The Life Of A Song

Styles: Piano Jazz
Year: 2004
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 65:29
Size: 150,6 MB
Art: Front

(5:55)  1. LWB's House (The Remix)
(8:08)  2. Mounts & Mountains
(8:15)  3. Lush Life
(6:13)  4. In Appreciation - A Celebration Song
(7:12)  5. The Experimental Movement
(4:40)  6. Holdin' Court
(4:05)  7. Dance Of The Infidels
(5:19)  8. Unconditional Love
(5:24)  9. The Life Of A Song
(4:33) 10. Black Bottom
(5:40) 11. Soul Eyes

Life of a Song is Geri Allen's first recording under her own name in six long years. She teams with the rhythm section of bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette, whom she worked with on the late Betty Carter's stellar live date Feed the Fire in 1993. Allen composed eight of the album's 11 cuts, and the covers include Bud Powell's "Dance of the Infidels," Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," and Mal Waldron's "Soul Eyes." This last selection is augmented by the participation of Marcus Belgrave on flugelhorn, saxophonist Dwight Andrews, and trombonist Clifton Anderson. The album's title reflects the depth of commitment to the song forms inherent in jazz. Allen is in fine form here, and one can hear her various instrumental and vocal influences. The album swings, but looks underneath swing for its subtleties and its edges, too. The set opens with a playful, pianistic dissonance on "LWB's House (The Remix)" and lest punters be alarmed, the tune is not "remixed" at all, but is actually an earlier composition reworked. The bluesy funk here is augmented with Afro-Cuban rhythms and a series of tonal shifts where Allen is trying to emulate the African stringed instrument, the kora. Swing is inherent in every chorus, and Holland and DeJohnette keep the pace relaxed yet deeply focused. The interplay between Holland and Allen on "Mounts and Mountains" particularly during the bassist's solo passage are remarkable as she responds with a contrapuntal solo that draws on both Herbie Hancock and Ahmad Jamal. Elsewhere, on the Powell tune her facility to usher it in a relaxed, easy way, and then dazzle with her two-handed counterpoint in the solo showcase Allen's quick wit and dazzling chromatic command. The title cut, with its obvious Hancock homage in the head and swinging head, is one of the album's many high points. This is a trio date that has all the elements: an indefatigable lyricism and honesty of emotion, as well as beautiful colors and deft, even uncanny engagements among the three principals. What a welcome return for Allen, who expertly displays she's been refining her chops and listening deeply to her Muse these past six years. ~ Thom Jurek http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-life-of-a-song-mw0000151431

Personnel:  Geri Allen – piano;  Dave Holland – bass;  Jack DeJohnette – drums;  Marcus Belgrave – flugelhorn;  Dwight Andrews – saxophone;  Clifton Anderson – trombone.

R.I.P.
Born:  June 12, 1957 
Died:  June 27, 2017

The Life Of A Song

Nina Simone - Here Comes The Sun

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 66:27
Size: 152.1 MB
Styles: Jazz vocals
Year: 1971/2015
Art: Front

[3:32] 1. Here Comes The Sun
[4:48] 2. Just Like A Woman
[3:14] 3. O-O-H Child
[4:58] 4. Mr. Bojangles
[4:41] 5. New World Coming
[3:29] 6. Angel Of The Morning
[6:16] 7. How Long Must I Wander
[5:07] 8. My Way
[3:25] 9. Tanywey
[1:39] 10. My Father Dialog
[8:10] 11. Jelly Roll
[3:49] 12. Tell It Like It Is
[8:41] 13. 22nd Century
[4:31] 14. What Have They Done To My Song Ma

Just past the point where a great artist reaches too far for new material, 1971's Here Comes the Sun presented Nina Simone in a contemporary setting with eight covers of recent rock hits. Though the title track isn't very embarrassing -- her voice betrays a few technical faults -- there are few successes with the rest of the material. Simone's versions of "O-o-h Child," "Mr. Bojangles," "Just Like a Woman," and "My Way" are historical curiosities and sound terribly dated (the furious bongos and sweeping strings on the last is a dénouement). Much of the problem lies with the arrangements, though several times these passable rock songs get the best from Simone's interpretive skills. ~John Bush

Here Comes The Sun