Piano Starts Here

Arguably the greatest pianist of all time going for Amazon's lowest price. What's not to like?Once asked why he didn't choose a more innovative, progressive, exploratory path, saxophonist supreme Sonny Stitt snapped back, "What's wrong with you, man? You're supposed to keep it simple and play so people understand the music and enjoy it. Look at Art Tatum. He was a genius, and all he did is try to entertain people."We could draw a number of lessons from the response: 1. Sonny overestimated the musical understanding of his audience; 2. Sonny underestimated what is required to entertain people in the present time. 3. Sonny was simply wrong, and Art Tatum's indisputable genius has nothing to do with his success with the greater share of the public, whose interest rarely extends beyond guitars and vocals (except for those occasions when a parent's child is performing in public)..Amazon currently has this Columbia collection priced as low as it can go, so it's a perfect time to pick up some Art Tatum for those who have yet to make his acquaintance. "Tiger Rag" was Art's explosive entrance in music, but to a public accustomed to relegate instrumental music to the background and to take automatic disclaviers and digital pianos for granted, it's highly unlikely the 1934 recording would have a comparable effect upon first hearing. But there are several ways to gain an entrance into Tatum's music which, like a Shakespeare sonnet, "tests" the listener as much as the other way around:1. Listen to the plainest, most unadorned version of the melody you can find--enough times that it's part of your consciousness. Be sure to take note of the form (32-bar song form, Type A song with a bridge or Type B song without a bridge, etc.). Keep time--don't wait for the time to catch ahold of you but take an active role in accounting for each beat.2. Put Tatum's version alongside versions of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. Before pulling the trigger and making a judgment, simply take note of the differences among them.3. Learn as much about the "language" of music as possible. Certainly we wouldn't feel competent to judge the meaning and effects of a language that was unfamiliar with us. Also, take into consideration the "dialects" that often make the comprehension of a native language difficult. The same is true with regard to musical "style."Tatum can be difficult because he offers too much, rather than too little, help to the listener. With Oscar Peterson the key changes are fairly predictable and clearly stated whereas with Tatum they slip in and out like a record that has either been momentarily slowed down or speeded up. With Monk, on the other hand, there are so many stops and starts, extended silences, deliberations that may or may not result in a musical statement, that we as listeners have no choice but to become involved in "helping him out" with completion of the melodic-harmonic-rhythmic idea.And rather than assume that a failure to respond fully to Tatum's music represents a shortfall--whether the listener's or the artist's--take it as a sign of progress. For all of us who struggle to grasp Tatum's art, there's a point where we wonder if we're simply being "snowed" by a lot of pointless technique. But without arriving at that point--of doubt, skepticism, suspicion--there's no possibility of making progress beyond it. You've come half way. The second half of the journey is to discover how all of those streams of notes can produce comprehensible and enjoyable, complete and immeasurable satisfaction and delight--not in spite of, but because of, the pyrotechnics. That moment brings the realization that the apparent extra verbiage, like the longer sentences of Faulkner or Joyce, aren't extra at all but essential to, if not inseparable from, the palace of art that has been constructed for the invited guest (but certainly not mapped, explored or domesticated) in record time. But from that point on, the world of the performance is all yours, and the revelation comes at the discovery of beauty that is a function of technique, not to mention a microcosm of the very nature of music, the creative process, and the potential of human consciousness itself.

ELLINGTON, Duke. Piano in the Foreground. Columbia. 2009; orig. 1961. $7.78.DE, p; Aaron Bell, b; Sam Woodyard, dr.TATUM, Art. Piano Starts Here. Columbia. 1995; orig. 1933, 1949. $3.99.AT, p.TATUM, Art. The Complete Pablo Solo Masterpieces. 1953-55. Pablo. 7 CDs. $68.54AT, p.MONK, Thelonious. Monk Alone: The Complete Solo Studio Recordings of Thelonious Monk, 1962-1968. SONY. 1998; orig. 1962-68. 2 CDs. $18.79.TM, p.MONK, Thelonious. Alone in San Francisco. SONY. 2011; orig. 1959. $8.99.TM, p.MONK, Thelonious. Thelonious Himself. Riverside. 2008; orig. 1958. $12.55.TM, p; John Coltrane, ts; Wilbur Ware, b.ELLINGTON, Duke, and his Orchestra. Black, Brown and Beige. Columbia. 2008; orig. 1958. $4.99.DE, p; Mahalia Jackson, voc; other soloists: Harry Carney, bari sx; Shorty Baker, Cat Anderson, tpt; Butter Jackson, John Sanders, Britt Woodman, tbn; Ray Nance, vln; Sam Woodyard, dr.ELLINGTON, Duke, and his Orchestra. Far East Suite. RCA Bluebird. 2011, orig. 1966. $11.98DE, p; soloists incl. Johnny Hodges, as; Harry Carney, bari s; Paul Gonsalves, ts; Lawrence Brown, tbn; Jimmy Hamilton, clari; Cat Anderson?, Shorty Baker?, tpt; Rufus Jones, dr.Piano in the Foreground would be of value if for no other reason than we get to hear Ellington at the piano, unadorned except for rhythm section. That's something that happened seldom in his long and productive recording career, and it's a loss to us: Ellington was not only a vastly talented, original composer and arranger -even among the Greats of American music a great-- and a superlative band leader, he was also an imaginative and inventive pianist. Infrequent solo turns on other albums have shown this (e.g. his 1959 small group album with Johnny Hodges, Side by Side, or Money Jungle, with bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach), as do brief passages and filigrees in Ellington band numbers, but he stands alone in these trio cuts from 1957. The songs played are standards ("I Can't Get Started," "Body and Soul," "Summertime," two takes of "All the Things You Are"), a Strayhorn classic ("Lotus Blossom"), some lovely ballads I've not heard before and thus don't know the provenance of (the best is "Fontainebleu Forest", the type of song Strayhorn penned but, then, Ellington was able to do Strayhorn on his own when he wanted to, so close were they in musical sympathies), and four short no-name piano improvisations.Listening to Ellington away from his band also clarifies where Ellington and Monk, two of the four most innovative piano soloists of their age were similar and where different. (The other two were Bud Powell and Art Tatum, of course.) Above all, both Duke and Thelonious both respected the melody lines in the songs they played. The chords Thelonious played may have sounded odd to his contemporaries -we've grown comfortable with them today- but he never just played chord changes, even in his most outré compositions. The melody lines are always there, right behind the alterations he played, backbone to his solos. Ellington has more in common with Monk in this regard than one might expect, and it is instructive to play Ellington solo in between a Monk solo piece and a rhythm section piece by Basie. (The great tenor sax player Lester Young once said that he always tried to learn the lyrics of a ballad before he started playing it because it helped him in deciding what notes to play.)Ellington's piano work lies about 2/3s of the way toward Monk, 1/3 toward his fellow swing maestro, Basie. Another obvious similarity between Ellington and Monk is in each man's reworking of harmony, the way they play the chromatic scale. I don't think there is any pianist more brilliant than Monk in his use of harmonies but Ellington is definitely no slouch.Lastly, both men, great composers each, carried a composer's mindset into their playing. It's difficult to pin this down in words, but it's obvious if you listen to them long enough. Their solos sound compositional. They have an architecture to them.We are fortunate to have a selection of albums that showcase Monk's solo piano. The best is still the first of them, the 1958 Thelonious Himself on Riverside Records, which contains the best version ever of Monk's classic blues, "Functional," and ends with a single trio cut, John Coltrane on tenor, Wilbur Ware on bass, joining with Monk on the autumnal ballad, "Monk's Mood." Anyone who thinks Monk inaccessible (unlikely to happen by now) should listen to this lovely album ,which is superb jazz improvisation but can be used as mood music if that's your druthers. The second Riverside album,, issued the next year, Alone in San Francisco, is almost ads good, and the 1962-68 sessions for Columbia, issued as a 2-CD set as Monk Alone: The Complete Solo Studio Recordings of Thelonious Monk, 1962-1968, are worth purchasing too. The truth is, almost anything by Monk is worth purchasing, and Ellington too.There's only one reason to buy Art Tatum's solo outing, Piano Starts Here, and that's price. It's comprised of four cuts from one of his first studio outings in 1933 with the rest of the album taken from a 1949 solo concert, and the music, as with most Tatum, is first rate. But the sound sucks and, because these cuts were recorded before long play records became the norm, are all quite short. Thanks to Norman Granz, who between 1953 and 1955 recorded record after record of Tatum alone and in duet to quartet with his peers. It's pricey, but the set to buy is The Complete Pablo Solo Masterpieces, seven CDs with 125 songs. The sound quality is great, Tatum is loose and ready to roll, and God's in His heaven.I've read criticisms of Tatum's playing as embellishment and technique, not improvisation, but I think that misses the point. No pianist in the history of jazz, not even Keith Jarrett or Giorgio Gaslini or Cecil Taylor or Marilyn Crispell, has had more control of the piano than Tatum did. I remember listening to Tatum one time, back when I was a young arrogant pup who thought the sun shone through Bud Powell (it did sometimes) and scorned pre=-bop piano as a result. I had just listened to Bud! On which Powell played a Bach solfegietto and then in the middle of his solo moved into full-scale jazz improvisation. It was great. It still sounds great. But Powell's fingering, when he got up speed, was often inexact, small delays in timing principally. Not Tatum's! Tatum could do a run at full speed with every note crystal clear separate and delivered right on time. And he would do this while pumping out a stride counterpart in his left hand at the same time. Tatum is just the greatest jazz pianist who has ever played and his solos are experiments in tempos and phrasings and harmonies, not running changes.One more album and that's it for now! In general, I find Ellington's great experiments with his band less satisfying than his albums with more modest aims. Thus, among the many suites he wrote and recorded with the band, I like best The Far East Suite, which, though labeled a `suite' is really a collection of individual songs which showcase players in his band. All the songs are played well but nothing comes close to Johnny Hodges' playing of "Isfahan," the prettiest ballad ever played. It is stunning.I held off buying Black, Brown and Beige, which was recorded the year I graduated from college until now because my memories of it were of overblown music with one jewel in the midst, Mahalia Jackson's deeply moving rendition of the Ellington hymn, "Come Sunday." I still think it's uneven. I do not find the up tempo sections which start the album compelling at all, although there are good ensemble and solo passages in them (like Harry Carney's in Part I). But part IV starts with a lovely statement of the theme, "Come Sunday," delivered on valve trombone by John Sanders, and then Ray Nance, who plays like an angel throughout this record, enters in violin obbligato, and it is so gorgeous, so moving! The next section is Mahalia's, with spare, rich backing from the orchestra. And then Mahalia sings an Ellington setting for the 23rd psalm. I still have reservations about this record. I think it works better as parts and sections than as a whole. I think the first them and the first two sections sound bombastic, although parts of them are affecting. But if I were asked to rate the album, I'd give it the highest rating for the sheer beauty of its best parts, for the melding of the greatest jazz band in the world with the greatest living gospel singer of the day, because few albums are as moving and heartfelt as this one.(A side bar: I saw Ellington live one time, at Kent State University in 1956. The band performed on a wood scaffolding that lifted it up above the crowd that was dancing or in my case, listening, near it. On up-tempo numbers, like Gonsalves's "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue," which had just been released that fall, the wood flooring beneath the band visibly jumped up and down in time with the rhythm of the drummer.As to Mahalia, my wife and I saw her in concert Easter Sunday, 1967, at Carnegie Hall. Her longtime companion Mildred Falls accompanied her on piano. She had been ill and there were worries that her illness might have affected her voice but it hadn't. It was a beautiful day for us.)

The piano playing here is brilliant, spontaneous, and energetic.There is a reproduction of this recording done by Zenph that uses computer technology to translate the original recording into a program that then plays through an actual piano. Many of the reviews for the Zenph recording say that the original is unlistenable because of the recording quality. I don't really get this because this recording sounds perfectly fine to me. You can hear the dynamic quality of Art's playing even though there is hiss and some variations in speed.I love classical piano and have several recordings done in the early 20th century where the hiss and pops are so bad that you can barely hear the music. This recording is nowhere near that level. Some Naxos recordings, such as those of Josef Hofmann, use engineers to clean up the sound. To me this is much preferable to using a computer reproduction.The reproductions done by use of computer, such as the Zenph reproduction of this and one done of Rachmaninoff called "Window in Time" done by Wayne Stahnke, sound mechanical to me.Also a note, this recording is offered twice by Amazon. I did the MP3 download for the $9.99 version and then realized that there is a $6.99 version. I didn't see any difference at all in the content, although they're offered through two different labels. When I pointed this out to Amazon they refunded me the difference.

Superb

こんな昔にこんな早弾きの人がいたことにビックリしました。

Cualquier cosa de Art vale muy mucho la pena. Técnica prodigiosa en un músico incomparable al q hay q visitar una y otra vez.

HI,there is so much great Tatum out there,this is a god place to start! it is hard to understand why this man continues to be underrated!

はじめてのアート・テイタム。人気ピアニストとしてトップに上げられていたが、今まで聴いたことなかったので聴いてみた。少しラグ的な古さが感じられ好みは分かれると思いますが、確かに素晴らしい。時代等を考えると音質に関しては仕方がないのでしょうが、もう少し良い音でききたいかなぁ。