Track Listing

1. Round Midnight
2. All The Things You Are
3. In The Moment
4. Passport

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #199042 in Music
• Released on: 2004-02-24
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live

Album Description
Recorded live at the Montreal Jazz Festival on June 30th, 1989.

Customer Reviews

Solid live jazz, unfortunately beyond my grasp.
Charlie Haden is not an artist I'm terribly familiar with, but he shows up in the Core Collection of The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings: Eighth Edition (Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings), so when I had a chance to pick up this CD for a song (sorry), I decided to go for it to experience and learn about this artist. Overall, I'm happy with my purchase, but I have to warn you, gentle readers: this is live jazz, four songs over sixty five minutes, so you have to be a true live jazz connoisseur to appreciate this recording in any measure. Unfortunately, I'm not much for recorded live jazz. That said, on this CD I really enjoy when the trio is going full steam, and we've got melody and harmony and rhythm going, and then when the players improvise with the others backing them, I like that too. But, when Charlie takes a twelve minute bass solo, I'm lost in the forest of improv and after about two minutes, I just don't care anymore. Amazingly, I even tried counting to see if he was still with the song or just looping around. That was no help. There were drum solos of similar meanderings, and sax solos with moments of clarity, but for the most part, when the individual musicians are playing on their own without accompaniment, they leave the average listener (me) confused and disoriented. As the title of this review suggests, I just do not possess the awareness and knowledge of jazz necessary to appreciate this type of recorded live music. Many years from now, when my jazz experience has doubled or tripled, I've no doubt I'll pull this out, put it on, and go, "Wow!", but today is not that day. Live jazz fans and fans of Haden and the feted Joe Henderson will likely enjoy this CD a lot, but I can't recommend it to casual jazz listeners.

Excellent sounds, if you are just a tad adventurous...
This is only my second Charlie Hayden CD, and my second Joe Henderson disc, but together in Montreal in live performance, they are quite good. The show was done in 1989, and while Joe and Charlie and drummer Al Foster were not exactly young, even then, they were powerful. Here you get more than an hour of improvisation, starting with Monk's "Round Midnight" and proceding to the classic "All The Things You Are" by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein. Then Haden's original tune, "In the Moment" takes up nearly 15 minutes, until the disc concludes with Charlie Parker's "Passport", a long, strange but satisfying trip of nearly 21 minutes. Those who are totally unfamiliar with the Mingus/Monk/Coltrane/Coleman style of jazz might find this a bit rough on the ears, but if you have heard the masters I listed, and like their works, you should love this. I don't care for mid-60's "avant-garde" jazz much, or for the fusion and funky jazz of the '70's, yet I like this album a lot. To my ear, it is more like the classic jazz of the '50's, just tweaked a bit. Tweaked by geniuses, that is.

Acoustic Jazz live, as it's meant to be

I love Charlie Haden's Quartet West recordings and I enjoy all the work I've heard by him. He may be the most innovative contemporary bassist and is a superb band leader to boot. Joe Henderson did not always get the critical respect he deserved, as witnessed by his excellent playing on this session.

This is a fine recording that effectively underscores why acoustic jazz is usually more compelling in a live, rather than studio, setting. The playing is warm and spirited throughout and Al Foster (drums) gets to really stretch out on a couple of occasions.

Unfortunately, "In The Moment" is the type of pure improvisation that comes across better in a concert setting than out of your stereo speakers. Nevertheless, a very worthwhile concert document overall.