Kenny Garrett: Beyond the Wall

[CJ Shearn]

I could not find the original thread on this, but anyway I picked it up last night. I gotta listen to it deeper, but so far "Calling" track number 1 kills, Pharoah sounds great on this. I also like the title cut, great solo by Mulgrew Miller who is under the piano, beneath the piano on top of the piano I also really like "Tsunami Song" really really pretty, and of course Booby plays great anyone else hear it yet?

[BFrank]

It got sort of a mixed review from Ben Ratliff in the NY Times:

KENNY GARRETT

“Beyond the Wall” (Nonesuch)

The jazz saxophonist Kenny Garrett, after a recent trip to China, started building notions about the similarities between Chinese and African cultures, including matters of health and philosophy, as well as pentatonic scales in music. What he came up with is “Beyond the Wall,” an album billed by the label as “a musical and spiritual exploration of the connections between China and Africa.” But jazz listeners won’t have to break their heads on this concept: the album owes more to the John Coltrane Quartet than either of those enormous land masses.

Mr. Garrett as always is poised, fast and deft on alto saxophone; his sense of time is ironbound, and he arranges his soloing ideas into confident streams of irregular phrases. He shares the front line with the tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, one of Coltrane’s old fellow-travelers, whose output has been uneven over the years but who plays astonishingly well here, rich-toned, rhythmically assured and harmonically sophisticated. They work hard on establishing common ground, finding similar pitch areas between the two instruments, and blending their approaches to rhythm.

Despite an excellent, deep-cushion rhythm section — Mulgrew Miller on piano, Robert Hurst on bass, Brian Blade on drums — the weak link is Mr. Garrett’s compositions. They use pentatonic scales in some of their melodies and come to rest in long stretches of single chords, with the pianist Mulgrew Miller playing quartal-harmony figures redolent of McCoy Tyner, the pianist from the mid-1960’s Coltrane band. (There are also some singers chanting wordless vocals, which don’t really help or hinder; they become just another layer in the theme sections.)

The best of the saxophone playing — especially in the title track and hymnlike track “May Peace Be Upon Them,” with some heavy-duty collective improvising — lifts this record up considerably. But the album sags under a kind of professional tedium, doing something very familiar almost too well.

BEN RATLIFF

[CJ Shearn]

after a second listen, I have to disagree with Ratliff, I dig it. "Kiss to The Skies" I really like, the groove and melody, its sort of in the "Happy People" "Sing a Song of Song" vein, and "Realization" (Marching Towards the Light) I enjoy for the meditative trancelike quality, actually I want to find a translation for the chant sampled in it.

[Aggie87]

For what it's worth, here is the Beyond the Wall thread. The album has also been mentioned in the more general Garrett thread.

[jazzypaul]

Well, this is the most recent talk about KG's latest, so I'm putting my comments here:

Energy wise, this is the best Garrett since Pursuance or Songbook. Those two, along with Triology, in my humble opinion, are the best that he's done.

Compositionally, though, this lags behind songbook (can't compare it to a disc of stuff he didn't write). There's not a head in the bunch that leaves me thinking, "damn! what a great composition!"

All in all, what I'm hearing right now is a disc that's a lot of fun to listen to, but one that'll probably sit on my shelf for a while after the buzz wears off.

[CJ Shearn]

he wrote most of the tunes on "Songbook", I like the energy of this new one overall, very intense soloing. I do hear some memorable things though a lot of stuff that will be standouts live. I hope the next KG record is live Paul, your views on this record are interesting and welcome. It shows how much different ppl interpret the same music. There are many melodies that strike me on this record, but also I think the emphasis of this record is more on blowing, rather than the composition+blowing aspect of "Standard of Language". One aspect I don't like of this new album, does anyone think it was recorded too hot? it doesn't sound as god as "Standard of Language" or "Pursuance".

Edited September 2, 2006 by CJ Shearn

[CJ Shearn]

up. anyone else?

[sal]

Saw it for $18.99, so I'm going to wait for a Borders coupon.

[montg]

I was really disappointed in this disc. When you consider the band--Hutcherson, Sanders, Blade etc-- and the greatness of KG, high expectations are in order. But after the first two songs, the disc takes a wretched turn. I found the vocal refrains to be annnoying and intrusive. On Qing Wen (the third song), the vocal refrain basically cuts in whenever a soloist is starting to build a statement after a few measures. Qing wen must be Chinese for 'interruption' And it's not like the refrain is interesting. Allthough the voice is good, the refrain is simple and it just repeats over and over and over. I know, it's probably an Eastern thing, but I found it annoying. Unfortunately, the vocals intrude on many of the remaining songs. I read somewhere where this was compared to Byrd's 'New Perspective'. Not even close. The chorale parts on Byrd's album frame the soloist and complement the music.

Sorry to be negative, I'm just disappointed. I sold the CD the same day I bought it. I'd recommend just buying the 4 or 5 decent cuts on itunes or whatever

[CJ Shearn]

I know what you mean about "Qing Wen" montg. It doesn't bother me that much, what does is the heavy compression on this disc as I noted in another thread. I enjoy this record though, "Standard of Language" for me may be KG's best record to date.

Edited September 7, 2006 by CJ Shearn

[montg]

I know what you mean about "Qing Wen" montg. It doesn't bother me that much, what does though is the heavy compression on this disc as I noted in another thread. I enjoy this record though, "Standard of Language" for me may be KG's best record to date though.

I thought the sound was sort of off too. Too bright, kind of like the saxes were out of pitch. It wasn't enough to detract from the music, but something certainly sounded off center to me.

[sal]

Finally got this disc and got through my first listen, which probably wasn't as focused as it could be, as I'm packing for a vacation. But initial impressions are that this is a fine disc. There was a track with a repeated Eastern chant that didn't work too well, and one of the tracks with the vocalist(s) seemed a bit muddy also. But these were really the only two songs that I can remember off hand that I didn't enjoy.

One thing that really caught my attention is the excellent musicianship from everyone involved. Kenny G and Brian Blade were in typical excellent form, but Mulgrew Miller, Pharoah Sanders and Bob Hurst turn in some really excellent performances. Being that this album is a tribute to McCoy Tyner, I think Mulgrew really captured the mood of Tyner's music without succumbing to plain old imitation. In many ways, he's really the glue that hold this music together. And Pharoah sounds truly awesome here. Definitely one of his better recorded performances in a while.

[7/4]

I got it last weekend and have given it a couple of spins. I approve. I think I'll be listening to this quite a bit this fall.

[Guy Berger]

I think I heard a track from this album on the radio today. The playing was great but the vocals just wouldn't stop!

Guy

Edited November 27, 2006 by Guy

[Nate Dorward]

Got roundly spanked/lukewarmed in Downbeat I see (one of their four-in-one reviews at the front part of the section).

[JSngry]

Had a listen to this one last night, & it got better for me the deeper into the disc it got. At first, I was kinda all eyes-rolling "o....k... more Trane shit" (even though as seemingly unanimously noted, Pharoah plays great throughout. But it's not his album....). Just waaaaaay too much gesture from the rhythm section, and Garrett seems more than happy to meet them on their terms rather than bringing them to his. But the further into it got, the less derivative it seemed to get, and my interest perked up accoringly. Maybe they just wore me down.

The voices don't bother me at all. I like voices ok. What did bother me was that too much of it sounded like it should have been a Strata-East side of 30+ years ago. C'mon, that shit was great then, but I know how it goes already, and have for quite a while. Give it a twist. Or something.

If I'd not already heard a lot of what this album was modeled on, I'd probably go apeshit & give it rave reviews. In DownBeat language, that's 5 stars. Knowing what I know, I'd give it 3 stars, just because no matter how good it is, and it's quite good, there's still a lingering sense that no matter how "intense" it is, it's more the intensity of effort rather than discovery. To be as objective as possible (and because Pharoah plays really, really beautifully from start to finish), I'll split the difference & give it 4.

[White Lightning]

I'm really enjoying this CD, especially Pharoah.

BTW, anyone knows why Pharoah is not recording or performing so much as a leader in the last few years?