Rick Margitza

[king ubu]

I had a chance to pick up Margitza's two latest Palmetto releases for a very good prize, and did get them. I only knew the very few tracks he made with Miles, and some of his work with Maria Schneider (one CD and one live concert, at that concert Rich Perry took all tenor solos safe one by Margitza).

I think he's a very solid player. Nice sound, nice style all together.

What do you think? There's almost nothing to be found on him on the board, safe for that Stanley Cowell CD which one should obviously better not get...

ubu

[king ubu]

It's these two discs I picked up:

and this is the artist site on http://www.palmetto-records.com/:

http://www.palmetto-records.com/cgi-local/...ID=192711244624

ubu

[minew]

Also highly recommended if you can find it is his '91 Blue Note "This is New" with Calderazzo and Watts among others. Includes his great composition "Gypsies."

We've been lucky to have RM here in NO for extended stays and I've become a fan.

[mikeweil]

I have quite a few of his records, leader and sideman dates, and I like him. He's not better or worse than most other players of his generation, but he strives for sincere expression and takes some chances along the way. He gets better with each album. The quartet stuff is very good IMHO, Mementio in particular.

I liked this one very much, which was one of Challege Records' best sellers:

[king ubu]

Hey Mike, thanks for this recommendation, and congrats to your new Groove Merchant status!

ubu

Edited November 28, 2003 by king ubu

[king ubu]

And I think after a first listen that I do prefer Memento, too. Miller and Blade do seem to make a difference! Colley is one of the better young mainstream bass players.

ubu

[randissimo]

I've known Rick since he was a kid around Detroit.. I've had a chance to play with him on a few occasions. The last time we played together back in March '97 I was driving from Ann Arbor to the gig with Rick in Grand Rapids in one of the worst ice storms of the decade! I made it somehow with only 15 minutes to set up for a gig that was being broadcast live on a local radio station.. I'm frantically trying to get my drums set up and poor Rick is trying to go over the charts and set list with me!

After a couple of tunes, we all managed to get into the "groove zone" When the gig was over, I went out and found an inch of ice covering my entire car!

Rick is a great player!

--Randy

[GA Russell]

I had never heard of him till I saw him at the '91 New Orleans Jazz Festival. The band was great!

So I bought his current CD, a Blue Note album called Colors, I think, and I've enjoyed that too.

[JSngry]

Here we have the answer to about the only unanswered jazz trivia question from Board BoomBoom:

What former Blue Note artist is the son of a frequently-used Motown session musician?

Margitza's dad was a violinist, I believe, and played on a BUNCH of Motown sides, including WHAT'S GOING ON.

You didn't think it was Sidney Bechet, did you?

[Larry Kart]

I only have "Heart of Hearts" of the ones he's made under his own name, and think I chose it over "Memento" after listening to both. Miller and and Blade are the bigger names, bit it seemed to me that Calderazzo and Ian Froman were a bit more tuned in to what what makes Margitza different from a lot of other players in the same general post-Trane/Wayne bag. I agree about the sincerity -- its presence or absence so difficult to quantify but definitely there in Margitza. Also, without being flashy, he's one hell of a fine saxophonist in purely instrumental terms -- a la Getz, perhaps, it sounds like he's making the whole the horn ring, could probably fill a large room without a mike, and yet is capable of very subtle shadings of volume and timbre. And his intonation is spot on. Another player who strikes me the way Margitza does is Tim Ries, though Margitza is a bit more openly or overtly "spiritual."

[randissimo]

I only have "Heart of Hearts" of the ones he's made under his own name, and think I chose it over "Memento" after listening to both. Miller and and Blade are the bigger names, bit it seemed to me that Calderazzo and Ian Froman were a bit more tuned in to what what makes Margitza different from a lot of other players in the same general post-Trane/Wayne bag. I agree about the sincerity -- its presence or absence so difficult to quantify but definitely there in Margitza. Also, without being flashy, he's one hell of a fine saxophonist in purely instrumental terms -- a la Getz, perhaps, it sounds like he's making the whole the horn ring, could probably fill a large room without a mike, and yet is capable of very subtle shadings of volume and timbre. And his intonation is spot on. Another player who strikes me the way Margitza does is Tim Ries, though Margitza is a bit more openly or overtly "spiritual."

Interesting you should mention Tim Ries. He is also from Michigan. I played with

Tim back in 1984 at the Bird of Paradise in Ann Arbor.. He is in fact a good friend of Rick Margitza, and back in '86 they were both playin' their asses off with Maynard Ferguson's band..

[Larry Kart]

I knew that Ries was part of that Southern Michigan/Northern Ohio scene but didn't know that he and Margitza are friends or that they were on Maynard's band together. I've got a fair number of Ries' albums and particularly recommend, if you can find it, what may be his very first one: "Imaginary Time" (Moo) -- Moo is a Japanese label--with Randy Brecker, Scott Wendholt, Scott Colley, Joey Baron, Billy Hart, Franck Amsallem et al. I'm not saying that Tim hasn't grown as a player, but this sounds like it was just one of those great sets of days in the studio where everything clicked. If you have the album or can get it, check out Amsellem's solo on "Jasia."

[Gary]

I had never heard of him till I saw him at the '91 New Orleans Jazz Festival. The band was great!

So I bought his current CD, a Blue Note album called Colors, I think, and I've enjoyed that too.

I have Colors on LP from when it was released (i first started to buy jazz about this time - only briefly until i rediscovered it about 7 years later). I dont think I've played it since - I'll give it a spin tonight.

[randissimo]

I knew that Ries was part of that Southern Michigan/Northern Ohio scene but didn't know that he and Margitza are friends or that they were on Maynard's band together. I've got a fair number of Ries' albums and particularly recommend, if you can find it, what may be his very first one: "Imaginary Time" (Moo) -- Moo is a Japanese label--with Randy Brecker, Scott Wendholt, Scott Colley, Joey Baron, Billy Hart, Franck Amsallem et al. I'm not saying that Tim hasn't grown as a player, but this sounds like it was just one of those great sets of days in the studio where everything clicked. If you have the album or can get it, check out Amsellem's solo on "Jasia."

Tim has also won the "Rock Star Lottery" .. If you didn't know, he's been touring with The Rolling Stones as their sax player! B)

[Larry Kart]

About the "rock star lottery," I thought of that Thursday night when I caught a bit of Harry Connick Jr.'s Christmas special and heard guys like Jimmy Greene playing with and beside the jaw droppingly out-of-tune singing of Connick Jr. At least Connick Jr. introduced the soloists by name, including a trumpeter named LeRoi (or LeRoy) Jones. Does A. I. Baraka know about this?

[brownie]

Heard a live broadcast from the New Morning club in Paris last month when Margitza played there with the (French) Moutin Reunion Jazz Quartet - Baptiste Trotignon, piano, Francois Moutin, bass, Louis Moutin, drums - and was impressed.

This is a very swinging and very cohesive unit.

Margitza has been playing around Europe for some years now but is about to start a US tour with the Moutin band very shortly.

Just a reminder that Margitza was the tenor player on some of Miles Davis final recordings ('Amandla' and the Montreux box).

[jlhoots]

My favorite Margitza, FWIW, is "Game Of Chance".

[James]

My last two Margitza purchases are the ones ubu has listed.

The other two I have are "This is New" [blue Note] with J. Calderazzo, T. Hagans, R. Hurst and J. Watts and "Work It" [steeplechase] with J. Williams, G. Mraz and B. Hart. Both very nice recordings.

.....and edited to say that Rick was in *fine* form when I caught him with Maria Schneider's orchestry in Orange County a couple of years ago.

Edited December 3, 2003 by James

[king ubu]

bumping this up... a couple of weeks ago the Radio France show "Jazz Club" (a two hour live broadcast from usually a club in Paris) featured a gig of Rick Margitza's quartet.

Then I also found this one in sales here:

It's a bit of a pastiche kind of album, but in the end things fit together quite well. Margitza, so says the Nocturne homepage, has been living for about a year in France now, and with this, his 10th album as a leader, he pays hommage to his eastern european gypsy roots. There are some 15 musicians appearing on this disc, many of them on only a few titles, but as I said, for me it all comes together pretty well.

Here's another trivia: who's grandfather has played bass with Glenn Miller and taken part in the "Bird with Strings" sessions? Of course, Rick Margitza's... (maternal, in case that matters... and he also played cello, so I guess that's what he played behind Bird)