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Ken Burns Jazz

Ken Burns Jazz - CD

Label: Columbia Legacy
Year: 2000
Released on LP: No
Released on CD: Yes

Tracks

1. Perdido
2. Le Souk
3. Audrey
4. The Duke
5. In Your Own Sweet Way
6. Blue Rondo a la Turk
7. Strange Meadowlark
8. Take Five
9. Allegro Blues
10. The Real Ambassadors
11. Koto Song
12. I Get a Kick Out of You
13. Sapito
14. Mr. Broadway
15. Stardust

Notes

The liner notes were written by Doug Ramsey.

Performers:

Dave Brubeck
Louis Armstrong
Bob Bates
Jerry Bergonzi
Leonard Bernstein
Dan Brubeck
Darius Brubeck
Ron Crotty
Lloyd Davis
Alan Dawson
Paul Desmond
Joe Dodge
Jon Hendricks
Dave Lambert
Joe Morello
Gerry Mulligan
New York Philharmonic
Perry Robinson
Jack Six
Bill Smith
Eugene Wright

Reviews

All Music Guide – CD - Review – copyright

In conjunction with the release of Ken Burns' ten-part, 19-hour epic PBS documentary Jazz, Columbia issued 22 single-disc compilations devoted to jazz's most significant artists, as well as a five-disc historical summary. Since the individual compilations attempt to present balanced overviews of each artist's career, tracks from multiple labels have thankfully been licensed where appropriate. The Dave Brubeck instalment is an excellent illustration of how the cool-jazz pioneer had his cake and ate it too. Brubeck was instrumental in popularizing the laid-back cool style, scoring a major hit with the LP Time Out and its ubiquitous standard "Take Five." Yet Brubeck also managed to keep his music challenging and complex despite its mellow melodicism, particularly through his pioneering use of odd rhythmic meters. Drawing selections from throughout Brubeck's career, Ken Burns Jazz provides an excellent introduction to his accessible yet artistically satisfying oeuvre, even if some of Brubeck's individual albums are classics in themselves.

Steve Huey
Copyright Rovi Corporation




Amazon.com - Copyright

Dave Brubeck is unlikely ever to rank among the great improvisers or composers of jazz, but throughout his career he has been a tremendous popularizer, managing to present otherwise challenging musical ideas--modernist harmonies, classical structures, and complex time signatures--in forms palatable to a large audience. In the 1950s and '60s, his quartet with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond attained levels of popularity virtually unknown to other modern jazz musicians. It was the kind of success that resists analysis, but it undoubtedly involved the contrast presented by Brubeck and Desmond, the pianist openly touching on the pensive, the boisterous, and the bombastic, the saxophonist a self-effacing master of a coolly detached, liquid lyricism. The contrast is apparent on early collaborative compositions like "Le Souk" and "Audrey" from 1954, when the group was at its most harmonically daring, and it grows even more marked on a later standard like "I Get a Kick Out of You." The group's greatest hits are also here--Desmond's "Take Five" and Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk"--as well as Brubeck's prettiest songs, "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "Strange Meadow Lark." Louis Armstrong joins Brubeck and the vocal group Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross for "The Real Ambassador," a 1961 novelty song that distinguishes touring jazz musicians from the usual diplomatic corps.

Stuart Broomer

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