Andrew Hill Sextet Plus Ten: A Beautiful Day, Revisited

The heyday of pianist Andrew Hill (1931-2007) happened during his hang with Blue Note Records, where he released ten albums between 1963 and 1970, including 1964's Black Fire, a splendid quartet session featuring saxophonist Joe Henderson; 1964's Point Of Departure), that featured a freewheeling sextet that included Henderson, multiple reedist Eric Dolphy and trumpeter Kenny Dorham; to Passing Ships (1969), with an exuberant multi-horn group that included trumpeter Woody Shaw, trombonist Julian Priester and flutist Joe Farrell. For those with a taste for the avant-garde, a more compelling, single-artist run of daring excellence on Blue Note would be hard to find.

This may have been the high point, popularity-wise, for HIll—maybe more accurately described as a high plateau—but he continued with an artistically successful career. And he remained prolific, coming back to and wrapping things up on Blue Note turf in 2006 with Time Lines.

The album A Beautiful Day, Revisited, comes from late-career Andrew Hill. Released originally in 2002 on Palmetto Records as simply A Beautiful Day, it featured the pianist with his sextet of that era—the same one (mostly) that played on his masterful Dusk (Palmetto Records, 2000). The addition of the word "Revisited" to the title refers to the refurbishing of the original recordings by Matt Balitsaris who took advantage of the technical advances offered by a quarter century of progress in production and editing technology. The sound has been tweaked and buffed up, and the mix is gently stirred. And now the music beams with an enhanced clarity.

So we have A Beautiful Day, Revisited by the Andrew Hill Sextet Plus Ten—the "Plus Ten" telling us that Hill is working in, for him, an unusual big band format, with the addition to his working sextet of three additional reeds, three more trumpets, three trombones and a tuba.

Hill's customary Blue Note way of working, format-wise, usually ran from quartet to sextet and the occasion septet. His compositions, arranging and piano playing all defy categorization. Like Thelonious Monk or Cecil Taylor, he was a peculiar and compelling stylist. His original and cerebral approach and his complex arrangements gave credence to the claim that jazz is America's classical music.

When working with horns—Point of Departure and Compulsion (Blue Note, 1967), and especially later with Dusk—Hill's arrangements exhibited a cool flow, sounding as if a good deal of what was being played was written down. A Beautiful Day, Revisited sounds looser, freer—not quite Cecil Taylor, Unit Structures (Blue Note, 1966)-loose, but as though the soloists have been allowed toa more than customery "just go for it" mode. That may be due to the live setting—the music was recorded at Birdland in 2002—and it may be in part that this was not, aside from the core sextet—what could be called a working band.

The result is two CDs (nearly eighty minutes) of late-career Andrew Hill, when he was at his creative peak, his art refined to the max, with recordings like the previously mentioned Dusk and Time Line, and A Beautiful Day, now expanded and revisited.