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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Ran Blake & Jaki Byard - Improvisations

Styles: Piano Jazz

Year: 1981

File: MP3@320K/s

Time: 45:05

Size: 103,6 MB

Art: Front

( 6:09) 1. On Green Dolphin Street

( 4:11) 2. Prelude

( 8:31) 3. Chromatics

( 3:47) 4. Wende

( 7:00) 5. Tea for Two

( 4:45) 6. Victoria

(10:38) 7. Sonata for Two Pianos

This very interesting release matches together Ran Blake and Jaki Byard in a set of piano duets. Because Byard (who can play credibly in virtually every jazz style) is highly flexible, he was able to meet Blake on his own terms and inspire him to play more extrovertedly than usual. Their seven collaborations (a pair of standards, one recent obscurity, Blake's "Wende" and three songs co-written by the pianists) have their playful moments, are quite exploratory, and always hold one's interest. In other words, this matchup works. ~ Scott Yanow https://www.allmusic.com/album/improvisations-mw0000193412

Personnel: Ran Blake, Jaki Byard (piano)

Improvisations

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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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Ran Blake & Dominique Eade - Whirlpool

Styles: Vocal And Piano Jazz
Year: 2011
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 45:10
Size: 103,9 MB
Art: Front

(3:39)  1. My Foolish Heart
(3:24)  2. Dearly Beloved
(5:44)  3. The Wind
(4:49)  4. Go Gently to the Water
(3:44)  5. Old Devil Moon
(2:57)  6. Pinky
(3:13)  7. Falling
(2:38)  8. Where Are You
(2:49)  9. Out of This World
(2:15) 10. The Pawnbroker
(3:33) 11. Dearly Beloved
(3:53) 12. The Thrill Is Gone
(2:24) 13. After the Ball

Already a student of Ran Blake at the New England Conservatory, Dominique Eade comes to this incision after two decades of professional careers, in which he has widely proved his skills, collaborating and recording with prestigious musicians. His first album dates back to 1990 (The Ruby And The Pearl) and he saw it together with the drummer Alan Dawson and the pianist Stanley Cowell. Since then he has released four more CDs (My Resistance Is Low, Long Way Home and Open) accompanied by musicians like Bruce Barth, George Mraz, Lewis Nash, Fred Hersch, Dave Holland, Victor Lewis. This incision in duo with Ran Blake implies a clear responsibility, for the immediate reference with the legendary work (The Newest Sound Around) that the pianist recorded in 1961 with the singer Jeanne Lee. Eade's vocal characteristics are those of the white tradition close to the (however revised) models of June Christy and Sheila Jordan. A comparison with that incision would therefore not be appropriate but the underlying syntax, unadorned and hallucinated, returns. The aesthetic is obviously that of Ran Blake, which Dominique Eade makes his own and proposes again with intensity and participation: the meeting ground are often famous ballads, dashed by the voice in a languid and bleeding way, that the dissonant harmonies and the timbric contrasts of the piano they illuminate a sinister and disturbing light. These are the most engaging episodes in a path that can sometimes be unfriendly. It is Monk's great lesson, transfigured in the light of the Third Current, which finds a new and fascinating definition of it. ~ AAJ Italy Staff https://www.allaboutjazz.com/whirlpool-ran-blake-jazz-project-review-by-aaji-staff.php

Personnel: Ran Blake (piano); Dominique Eade (vocal).

Whirlpool

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Enrico Rava, Ran Blake - Duo En Noir

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 38:19
Size: 87.7 MB
Styles: Trumpet jazz
Year: 2000/2009
Art: Front

[4:05] 1. Nature Boy
[5:09] 2. Vertigo Laura
[2:54] 3. The Spiral Staircase
[1:50] 4. Shake The Cage
[2:30] 5. Certi Angoli
[4:52] 6. There's No You
[3:45] 7. Let's Stay Together
[3:06] 8. I Should Care
[4:37] 9. Tea For Two
[5:26] 10. There's A Small Hotel

Trumpeter Enrico Rava has proven himself adept at virtually every style of jazz, from bop through the avant-garde. For this short recording, he teams up with third-stream pianist Ran Blake in a series of 12 emotionally drenched tunes emphasizing the kind of dark, foreboding atmosphere for which Blake is well-known. Highlights include wonderful interpretations of "Tea for Two," "I Should Care," "Let's Stay Together," a pairing of "Vertigo" and "Laura," and "Nature Boy." Rava does his best to adapt his usually brighter playing to the overall noir atmosphere, and he generally succeeds, making this a must-have for followers of both Blake's and Rava's work. A strong lyrical element permeates, as the two explore all of the nooks and crannies of each tune, often in slow motion. The results speak for themselves, and the enthusiastic live audience was clearly touched. ~Steve Loey

Duo En Noir mc
Duo En Noir zippy

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