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The Hard Bop / Avant-Garde Synergy of Andrew Hill (1963 - 1965)
by Russell Perry
Blue Note Records in the 1960s released such iconoclastic projects as Cecil Taylor's Unit Structures and Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch, but the label was best known for music on the Art Blakey--Horace Silver axis. As Ted Gioia has noted ..."other, less radical Blue Note releases showed that there could be a meeting point between hard bop and the avant-garde. Important projects such as Andrew Hill's Point of Departure [1964], [and] Bobby Hutcherson's Dialogue [1965]... were anything but drab repetitions ...
Continue ReadingBlue Note releases from November 1969: Hill, Hutcherson, Cox & Pearson
by Marc Cohn
Time for Blue Note 50th anniversaries from November 1969, with released by Andrew Hill (Passing Ships), Bobby Hutcherson (Now!), Kenny Cox (Multidirection) and a short Duke Pearson session that ended up on I Don't Care Who Knows It. There's also BN-15, a 78 from Meade Lux Lewis. Along the way: 13-year-old Brandon Goldberg on the 88s & tenorist and lawyer Ari Ambrose. Enjoy the show and thanks for listening, especially to our top listeners of last week in: Strasbourg (France), ...
Continue ReadingBlue Note 50th Anniversaries: October 1968 & More
by Marc Cohn
The first show of the month means it's time for a dive into the Blue Note vault for our monthly celebration of Blue Note 50th anniversaries. Before that, the doctor presents a selection of recent music that caught his ear. As a bonus, you will find Albert Ammons, from the second Blue Note release, which was recorded at the first Blue Note recording session ever in 1939 (the original 78s of Blue Note's first release, from Meade Lux Lewis, are ...
Continue ReadingAndrew Hill: Point of Departure – 1964
by Marc Davis
I have put off writing this blog post as long as possible. For three weeks, I've been listening to Andrew Hill's Point of Departure and contemplating what I can say that isn't blatantly subjective and negative. I give up. I just don't like it. I honestly thought I might appreciate this, even though I don't generally like avant-garde jazz. Almost everyone seems to love this record. Let me count the ways: The new ...
Continue ReadingAndrew Hill: Solos - The Jazz Sessions
by Karl Ackermann
"My name is Andrew Hill--pianist." With humility characteristic of his long career in music, these words open Solos: The Jazz Sessions. Hill's avant-garde contemporaries like Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton often pushed the boundaries of their music in directly experimental and mathematical ways and the affect is sometimes intentionally discordant. Hill's unique ability was to embrace melody even as he took it to the breaking point. His capacity to cast it off and reel it back in seamlessly was a ...
Continue ReadingAndrew Hill: Point Of Departure
by Greg Simmons
The folks at Music Matters have been reissuing classic Blue Note albums of the 1950s and 1960s at an aggressive clip, and have been careful to include virtually every style of music the label recorded, including some of its more challenging material. Pianist Andrew Hill's Point of Departure (1964) will never be mistaken for light cocktail jazz, but it's inclusion in this reissue series displays Music Matters' commitment to more adventurous material. In 1964, the term avant-garde could ...
Continue ReadingAndrew Hill: Change
by Jeff Stockton
Until Mosaic issued the limited-edition, seven-disc box set, The Complete Blue Note Andrew Hill Sessions (1963-66), pianist Andrew Hill's remarkably prolific and consistently excellent Blue Note recordings languished in obscurity, especially on CD where only his masterpiece, 1964’s Point of Departure, was available with any certainty. Since then at least ten titles recorded between 1963 and 1970 have seen individual release (most with alternate takes), with Change being one of the most recent to be made available on ...
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