Billy Hart Quartet, Just

[Guy Berger]

The group’s 4th album overall, and 3rd one overall.  Hart, Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson, Ben Street,

I liked their prior two ECM outings a lot, especially One Is the Other.

(Separately: I wish someone would reissue Enchance, even digital only!)

[Guy Berger]

Gave this a few listens.  Enjoyable if you liked the prior two.  No strong opinion beyond that.

[Brad]

Billy Hart Has One Foot in Jazz’s Past and the Other in Its Future

No paywall. 

[Guy Berger]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

Billy Hart Has One Foot in Jazz’s Past and the Other in Its Future

No paywall. 

Thanks for sharing!

[GA Russell]

After Two Decades of Playing Together, the Billy Hart Quartet – with Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson and Ben Street – is Distinguished by its Stylistic Openness on Just New York Times Feature   "No one works the toms like the untouchable Hart, and his work alongside Street for the last 20-plus years continues to impress, especially alongside the effusively ornate Iverson. Adding Turner’s bending clarion calls makes for some bold playing." — DownBeat   "Hart shows no signs of slowing down with his elite quartet; once again delivering top shelf contemporary fare." — Glide Magazine After twenty-plus years of shared activity, the Billy Hart Quartet – with Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson and Ben Street – is still distinguished by its stylistic openness, a consequence of setting out to embrace all the things that drummer-leader Hart likes to play. “If ever there was an example of contemporary jazz that draws extensively on all the ‘traditions’ while infusing some of the melodic clarity associated with the more challenging end of popular song, then this is it,” wrote Kevin Le Gendre in Jazzwise of the quartet’s album One Is The Other. A drummer of enormous experience, who has played through many of jazz’s idiomatic upheavals, Billy Hart, now 84, favors a ‘multi-directional’ sound approach, and his younger confrères respond accordingly, each piece subtly opening another door. The quartet is an alliance of four highly individual improvisers. As pianist Ethan Iverson has noted: “A jazz group is a sensitive mechanism. You’ve got to play together and listen hard, but there’s also a way you need to stay your own course.”   It helps that the group has three strong writers in Iverson, Turner and Hart himself. Iverson contributes four contrasting compositions to Just: the sly, floating “Chamber Music”, the eruptively motoric “Aviation”, the abstract blues “South Hampton”, and the pretty, lilting “Showdown.”   Mark Turner and Hart himself each bring three tunes. Turner’s pieces are “Billy’s Waltz”, both a graceful dance and a vehicle for blues-conscious swing, the up-tempo vamp “Top of the Middle”, and the freely expressive “Bo Brussels” with a theme that continues to unwind in unexpected ways. Hart’s contributions include updates of two of his well-known tunes, “Layla-Joy” and “Naaj”, both returned to on multiple occasions in his long career, and the title piece, whose emphatic beat may trigger memories of the days when Billy was the driving force in Herbie Hancock’s band, or Eddie Harris’s. In this group, older pieces are made new. The present take of “Layla-Joy” opens with Mark Turner phrasing like Coltrane in ballad mode, before the tender melody is splintered and the group moves into spacious and exploratory group improvising.   In an interview with Jazz Times, in the early days of the BHQ, Hart said of his colleagues: “They’re brilliant contemporary conceptualists. Playing my older tunes, I’m not playing any freer with anybody than I play with them. Mark profoundly understands Coltrane, but also has total command of Lennie Tristano’s vocabulary. With Ethan, it’s like playing with Thelonious Monk or Andrew Hill one minute and Herbie Hancock the next.” It has remained a forward-looking group thoroughly grounded in the music’s history.   * Billy Hart first appeared on ECM half a century ago, on Bennie Maupin’s classic The Jewel In The Lotus in 1974, returning in the 1990s as Charles Lloyd’s drummer of choice to play on The Call, Canto, All My Relations and Lift Every Voice. The Billy Hart Quartet with Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson and Ben Street was formed in 2003 and, after a debut album issued on the High Note label in 2006, came to ECM for All Our Reasons in 2012, which also marked first appearances at the label for Ethan Iverson and Ben Street. In addition to the BHQ work, Turner and Iverson collaborated on the duo album Temporary Kings (2018), and Billy Hart and Ben Street reappeared as rhythm section for Aaron Parks on Find The Way (2017).    Saxophonist Mark Turner has recorded also as a leader for ECM, his discography including Lathe of Heaven (2014), and Return from the Stars (2022), as well as albums with the cooperative trio Fly (Sky and Country and Year of the Snake). Bassist Ben Street’s credits include work with the quartet of another veteran drum innovator, Andrew Cyrille (on The Declaration of Musical Independence and The News). Street was also featured as part of the Ethan Iverson Quartet on the live album Common Practice (2019). * Just was recorded in New York’s Sound On Sound Studios in December 2021.   For further information: Billy Hart, Drummer :: Official Website and www.ecmrecords.com Billy Hart · Just ECM · Release Date: February 28, 2025   For more information on ECM, please visit: ECMRecords.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter   # # #

[Brad]

23 hours ago, Guy Berger said:

Thanks for sharing!

👍