Jazz Articles about Andrew Hill

About Andrew Hill

Radio & Podcasts

Blue Note 50th Anniversaries for March and More

by Marc Cohn
March 20, 2020

It's time for Blue Note 50th anniversaries. We present material from Andrew Hill with voices and The Three Sounds live in L.A., which was released decades after the actual recording dates. In addition, Jack McDuff recorded with a big band in London, released on LP as To Seek a New Home, but never released on CD and not presently commercially available. The really way-back machine yields Blue Note 19 with Meade Lux Lewis playing blues and boogie on the harpsicord! ...

Radio & Podcasts

The Hard Bop / Avant-Garde Synergy of Andrew Hill (1963 - 1965)

by Russell Perry
March 3, 2020

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 ...

Radio & Podcasts

Blue Note releases from November 1969: Hill, Hutcherson, Cox & Pearson

by Marc Cohn
November 8, 2019

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), ...

Radio & Podcasts

Blue Note 50th Anniversaries: October 1968 & More

by Marc Cohn
October 12, 2018

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 ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Point Of Departure

by Marc Davis
October 12, 2015

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 book Uncompromising Expression, a ...

Extended Analysis

Andrew Hill: Solos - The Jazz Sessions

by Karl Ackermann
November 1, 2013

"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 ...

Album Review

Andrew Hill: Point Of Departure

Read "Point Of Departure" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
January 8, 2012

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 ...