Gheorghe

I don´t have it, but it must be interesting, since the usual set list was almost always the same: Blue´n Boogie, Round Midnight, Night in Tunisia etc. Here there is more Monk compositions and "I Waited for You" was seldom played after the bop era. It´s a beautiful ballad. I think this record is hard to find....

Some good stuff from Viena, Austria. All those musicians are leaders himself and I am grateful that I perform with them or they play in my own band. Trance of Noiz is the wonderful album by Andi Steirer, perc. Humpty Bump from Oliver Kent´s All Star unit Worry Later, wonderful and Oliver is my favourite pianist here. Ray Aichinger´s Boogaloo album I love it just to have a lot of musical fun. Uli Langthaler is one of the most creative bassists around. He is a great composer and bandleader Dusan Novakov is probably the most recorded drummer here in Austria and has played with all greats I can imagine. Monday Night with Kirk Lightsey.... Waltz for Serena by Bop Explosion, my own band gathers Andi Steirer, Uli Langthaler, Dusan Novakov and two great horn players : Johannes Probst had performed with Lee Konitz and Barry Harris, Márton Papp as, is the young guy who had played with all greats here in Austria, he also had performed with James Rotondi while he was teaching in Graz.......

Bud Powell in top form. Here are some of his best solos. Even if he was the greatest, he did not always reach such heights of inspiration like here.

I saw Don Menza at Jazzland at the times where I was in semi retirement due to some "just of those things"...., and he was great. Oliver Kent is a musical friend and I always state that he is my favourite piano player and composer here in Austria. On my homepage there is a pic of him an me getting copies of a jazz book..... Johannes Strasser is one of the really really great bass players in Ausria. He had played with so many greats. Some highlight was a wonderful concert with Chet Baker. Strasser had played some gigs with me when we both were very very young in our earlie twens.....

His real name ist Raimund ! On advertising and billing he is listed as "Ray". Because he calls himself Ray, I once suggested we play "Ray´s Idea" and many folks play it in F or ....Chet Baker recorded it in B flat, but Ray suggested D flat which is my favourite key for that tune. Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie recorded it in Db back in the 40´s.

Great record, if I just want to hear some swingin stuff just to relax. Very nice and so easy to identify each of them. I´m less familiar with Zoot Sims and Al Cohn than with Trane and Mobley, but both sound nice. Zoot is a bit more boppish and Al Cohn likes to bend notes, it was kinda trademark of him, I saw him live once with Woody Herman and he is easily to recognize. Never saw Zoot and I think I heard him only on the Miles Davis and Horns, and on Bud Powell in Paris at the Blue Note. Hank Mobley, what a shame: Now everybody is talking about him, and when I heard all the surviving greats when the came an increased interest of acoustic jazz, and Dexter and Griffin could return to the States, Mobley was "a forgotten man". What a shame.

One of my favourite tenor players here in Austria is Ray Aichinger, who´s sound is quite similar to Hank Mobley´s. I always enjoy to hear him live and this is his latest album. Most of the tunes are originals by himself and by the Brooklyn born trumpet player Mark Osterer, really catchy tunes, most of them boogaloo. My favourites here is "Old Man and Seagull", "Oide Donau" (Old Danube), and the wonderful fast samba "Flight of the Tucan".......

I think I have the Monk, maybe some other, if there ever was one with Mingus too I must have it.

So great ! Alice Coltrane with Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis is tops. Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, Cecil McBee and Jimmy Garrison, what else you can wish And Pharaoh´s Harvest Time my new favourite. The second live performance at Willisau ...... wonderful, Pharoah has been one of my first musical loves.....

I first heard Joanne Brackeen in 1978 with Joe Henderson. Joe Henderson was and is one of my favourite tenorists and the big surprise was Mrs. Brackeen on piano, who sounded like someone who really loves McCoy Tyner, which is great, really great ! She was the surprise of the whole tour and very positively commented on "Jazz Podium". Some years later she was billed on a "Trumpet Super Night" and was billed on a Chet Baker-Joe Farrell group where she would have been on piano. Anyway there was three sets. The first would have been Chet-Farrell, the second Dizzy Allstar quintet, and the third Wynton Marsalis qintet. Before start the MC announced that Chet could not come because he remained locked in a camera de hotel în Roma. Whatever....... so it was a Quartet with Joe Farrell . But during the course of the set they also did some tracks of Brackeen Houston but sorry to say I didn´t atract my attention. Somehow it didn´t sound like "jazz" and without a drummer I´m lost.......

I have two tracks I got traded: Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gorden, George Benson, Hancock, Carter, Williams: "April" and "Caravan". That´s great. To bad there was not a whole record of THIS ALLSTAR FORMATION, it would have been something like the Allstar Gathering of Massey Hall. To have Diz with Tony Williams, man Tony really spurred Diz to heights. I think an equal eveniment was the 1980 Diz with James Moody, Milt Jackson, Hank Jones, Ray Brown and Philly Joe Jones. Other that Miles, I fear that Dizzy didn´t have such a good choice for drummers like he had in the beginnings. Kenny Clark and Max Roach was it. But later? He should have had more daring drummers. Well....Mickey Roker was great.

I posted it yesterday when I heard the first CD. This night the second CD. Again: The best Sonny Rollins I ever heard which is near to the level I enjoyed on his live performances. But......in mod evident there is not much love here for Sonny when he was no more a Twen or around 30, but from his later forties on..... I like that kind of Sonny Rollins most. Never heard better Calypsos than here Carnaval and St. Tomaas, and on Swingtunes like Isnt she Lovely and Moritate he swings like the way, most of you who love the old bebop Sonny rollins might be delightet.

This night I have listend to this superb live concert. In my opinion this is some of the very best Rollins after 1975. There is some tehnical problem with the recording at the beginning, where you can´t hear Stanley Clark properly, but that does not reduce the non plus ultra quality of that music with Sonny in best playing mood. I know there have been some discussions where there are opinions that the Rollins of the 50´s or so was "better° but not for me: I heard him live only from the 1970´s on and seldom was seeking first for then historical records, since those giants were here and performed. So I have a completly different point of view about this. There are great tunes, some of them from a then recent album others even looking back like Moritate from an old old album. Al Foster anyway is some of my very favourite drummers, period. And Stanley Clark and George Duke mostly have been known for their immense contributions to fusion/funk/jazzrock, but really excell on older stuff too. For example, both had played with Dexter Gordon. Stanley Clark is the highlight of a then newer Dex recording, and George Duke is on a live recording of Dex from the early 80´s around the time Gotham City was made.....

I heard this last night ! Such a great music, Freddie Hubbard in great playing mood and very daring, and a dreamband with all of them stars. I had seen Benny Green and Javon Jackson with Art Blakey in the late 80s. Great tunes. My favourite is "Phoebe´s Samba".......

Was my first Charlie Parker entry ! It was the moment where I had to start to learn that music for me to play, I mean to play including more knowledge of playing jazz. Until then I was just the admirer of music like the contemporanous Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, of Ornette Coleman late Trane, Pharoah, Sun Ra. I discoved Bird just from trying to read liner notes, where there was mentioned Charlie Parker. Before that I didn´t know there was astonishing modern soundig music as far back as 1950.