Ran Blake & Jeanne Lee - Free Standards

Styles: Vocal And Piano Jazz
Year: 2013
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 73:05
Size: 168,6 MB
Art: Front

(1:45)  1. Ticket to Ride
(2:58)  2. Kind'a Sweet
(2:18)  3. Corcovado - Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars
(3:00)  4. Let's Go
(2:10)  5. Ja-Da
(2:41)  6. Bombastica!
(2:24)  7. Lydiana : People of this world
(1:31)  8. Crystal Trip
(2:38)  9. A Taste Of Honey
(4:02) 10. Night and Day
(2:17) 11. I Can Tell
(3:16) 12. Take the 'A' Train
(3:02) 13. Living Up to Life
(2:08) 14. A Hard Day's Night
(2:43) 15. The Girl From Ipanema
(3:32) 16. Vanguard
(0:34) 17. Glaziation
(5:29) 18. You Stepped Out of A Dream
(4:17) 19. I Can Tell More
(4:22) 20. Desafinado & One Note Samba
(2:31) 21. Stars Fell On Alabama
(3:35) 22. Just Friends
(4:07) 23. Free Standards
(2:55) 24. I'll Remember April
(2:38) 25. Honeysuckle Rose

In 1961 singer Jeanne Lee (1939-2000) and pianist Ran Blake (born 1935) emerged as one of the most innovative duos on the New York jazz scene. Presenting an almost freely improvised reading of standard and original melodies, they blended voice and piano in a manner seemingly without any boundaries except those imposed by their individual disciplines. It was a stunning combination, but aside from a few concerts, a local television show, a praised RCA Victor album, and an appearance at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival, they found little work in the US. In Europe, however, it was a different story. 

There the duo’s subtlety, daring and wit, along with Lee’s warmth and precision and Blake’s inventiveness, were immediately  appreciated. They opened a series of well-received North-European concerts in 1963 at Stockholm’s Golden Circle and returned there three years later, when these examples of their unique artistry were captured in a studio recording session. In combination they pass, blend, meld, and move around each other in a manner both delicately nuanced and vaguely disconcerting, demanding attention in a way no other group of this kind has done.
http://www.freshsoundrecords.com/free_standards__stockholm_1966-cd-5954.html

Featuring: Ran Blake (p), Jeanne Lee (vcl)

Free Standards

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Jeanne Lee & Ran Blake - The Newest Sound Around

Styles: Vocal And Piano Jazz
Year: 2000
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 52:50
Size: 121,7 MB
Art: Front

(5:08)  1. Laura
(4:44)  2. Blue Monk
(3:10)  3. Church on Russell Street
(4:14)  4. Where Flamingos Fly
(2:30)  5. Season in the Sun
(4:33)  6. Summertime
(5:09)  7. Lover Man
(3:04)  8. Evil Blues
(2:40)  9. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
(4:50) 10. When Sunny Gets Blue
(1:17) 11. Love Isn't Everything
(3:14) 12. Vanguard
(2:52) 13. Left Alone
(2:06) 14. He's Got The Whole World In His Hands
(3:11) 15. Straight Ahead

"Third stream" may have been the bandied term, but this unjustly ignored 1962 duet set, the debut for pianist Blake and singer Lee, who worked up their act while studying at Bard College, plays blissfully free of the lumbering lugubriousness and Big Mac-thick philosophizing that mar so much of that music. The eeriness, the mystery, and the sweetness lie always in the deceptive simplicity, never more so than on the opener, "Laura," sketched by Johnny Mercer as a hazy image of loveliness, always out of reach and perhaps not even real, and she flickers in and out of existence with the strike and fade of Blake's figures, the attack and decay of Lee's intonation, now husky, now fruity, but as exacting as Miles Davis' muted trumpet. "Church on Russell Street" is Blake's alone, a gospel show for solo piano late at night, or early in the morning, when everyone but the pianist and maybe the Lord has gone home. "Where Flamingos Fly," from which Van Morrison peeled a few leaves years later, finds Lee a mournful anti-siren, losing her lover and a few members of the animal kingdom to an island that may be Aruba, Iceland, or even Alcatraz; Blake tests single notes like water drops, rumbles chords for incoming tide, stabs boldly at the not quite in tune top octave on his keyboard. "Season in the Sun" (nowhere near Terry Jacks) injects levity with bassist George Duvivier sitting in (as he does on "Evil Blues," the second dash of comic relief) and Lee dryly, slyly insinuating the brevity of her bikini. "If there's going to be an enduring 'new wave' in jazz styling...this voice, this piano may well be the beginning," reads an uncredited blurb on the cover. The record started no revolution, probably because no other two performers had such chemistry or such a distinctive reaction. As jazz styling, though, it endures unsurprisingly. You hear the set in less than one hour (four CD-only bonus tracks included). You spend decades wandering inside the sound, as you might inside a sonic Stonehenge, savoring each new vantage point discovered, and the impossibility of discovering them all.~ Andrew Hamlin https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-newest-sound-around-mw0000529734
 

Personnel: Jeanne Lee: vocals; Ran Blake: piano

The Newest Sound Around

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Jeanne Lee & Mal Waldron - After Hours

Styles: Vocal And Piano Jazz
Year: 2003
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 42:21
Size: 98,4 MB
Art: Front

(7:28)  1. Caravan
(7:07)  2. You Got To My Head
(4:03)  3. I Could Write A Book
(3:24)  4. Goodbye Pork-Pie Hat
(3:17)  5. Straight Ahead
(7:21)  6. Fire Waltz
(4:30)  7. I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart
(5:10)  8. Every Time We Say Goodbye

Mal Waldron’s passing this past December robbed jazz of one of its finest and most original pianists. His long career was marked by many high points, including stints with Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy and Booker Little. It is especially wonderful to listen to Waldron in solo and duet settings, where his unique style on his instrument can be heard to its fullest effect. One of the best of these albums is After Hours, a thrilling standards set recorded with the late vocalist Jeanne Lee. While Lee’s voice is an acquired taste, it is often grand and expressive. Lee soars through her remarkable range, but she always retains a sense of intimacy.

Waldron, who spent the last few years of Billie Holiday’s life as her accompanist, is sensitive to Lee’s needs as he improvises behind her. Yet Waldron never fails to enchant the listener with his haunting tone and his unique touch. After Hours has a meditative rather than romantic air about it, which suits both Lee and Waldron’s styles. Both artists are masters of understatement, drawing more attention with a whisper than many could with a shout. The song selection is eclectic. An exotic “Caravan” sits alongside a mournful “Goodbye Pork- Pie Hat” and a sultry “I Could Write a Book.” Each performance is rich and deeply nuanced, inviting the listener to “listen and dig it,” as Lee sings in “Pork-Pie Hat.” Can you dig it? Mal Waldron was playing what he was feeling.   ~ Alexander M.Stern   http://www.allaboutjazz.com/after-hours-jeanne-lee-owl-records-review-by-alexander-m-stern.php#.U20xMChnAqY
 

Personnel: Jeanne Lee, voice; Mal Waldron, piano

After Hours

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