Track Listing

1. Twilight Song
2. For Heaven's Sake
3. Spring Is Here
4. Body and Soul
5. You Don't Know What Love Is
6. Waltz for Ruth
7. Very Thought of You

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10273 in Music
• Brand: Haden
• Released on: 1998-03-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Amazon.com
Except for applause at the end of a couple of tunes and a single quiet cough, you might not be aware you're listening to a club recording, so hushed is the Iridium audience during this quietly intense 1996 musical dialogue between Kenny Barron and Charlie Haden. The ballad conversations are so intimate that it's almost inappropriate to break them up into the constituent players, but Barron is magnificent, opting for single-note lines over Haden's deeply resonant bass, stringing out a continuum of inventive, often double-time phrases that animate the slowest tempos. Even the chromatic fantasia that introduces the luminous "Very Thought of You" is spare. With Haden, less is more; there's never an unnecessary note, never a superfluous phrase. His accompaniments consist of only the barest harmonic substructure and the minimal pulse, while his solos sing as unadorned melody. Each piece is given time to unfold (the seven selections last 70 minutes), and the results are quietly intense, sometimes exalted, music-making. It's fine late-night listening, in the city or anywhere else. --Stuart Broomer

Jazz Times
Pianist Barron's art seems to grow deeper with each passing year.... Haden, by contrast, seems to have grown more concise.... Haden and Barron each contribute a tune to the standards that are the main course here: "Body and Soul" belies its well-earned chestnut status, and "You Don't Know What Love Is," though the shortest selection here, glistens.

Customer Reviews

Kenny Barron and Charlie Haden are Exceptional
Shortly after I bought this CD I saw Sphere Live at the Vanguard, and commented to Kenny That this had to be his best, and probably one of the best Jazz Recordings ever, destined to enter the history books, this is a "must have".

Just buy it, and sit back and listen, as I have time and again.

Typical Haden, but STILL worth the ride ....
If that "summary" doesn't convince you to give this recording a gamble, it's because you haven't heard Haden.

Haden's my hero. He knows the true value of "collaboration." Even on the soft ballads, you JUST KNOW what he's going to play, and yet you anticpate every note he plays, and you cherish each passing moment.

Kenny Baron has NEVER disappointed the listener, and once again he pleases me.

Here's the paradox of this music: the listener understands PRECISELY where Barron's boundary ends and Haden's begins; and yet, you're willing to accept the crossings of those boundaries ... but THAT NEVER HAPPENS, and least NOT in the conventional ways.

Simple music and yet very nourishing. Many a moon I have played a Haden CD in my car after a day at work I thought would never end -- but alas, no evening REALLY ends without Haden offering someone else the opportunity to give a commentary.

But why settle for my words when you can just listen for yourself? To paraphrase the MasterCard commercial: some things in life words cannot express ...

... for everything else, there's Charlie Haden...

Maybe Barron's best
Kenny Barron is one of the best pianists in jazz today and Night and the City may be his best recording.

Recorded live with bassist Charlie Haden, the pair set a wonderful, late night mood that carries the listener through the entire recording.

Dark, lyrical, intimate, beautiful; this is a record I turn to over and over again.