Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy - The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp (2024) CD Rip

28 Apr, 23:06
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Artist: Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy
Title: The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp
Year Of Release: 2024
Label: Elemental Music [5990446]
Genre: Jazz, Free Jazz, Post Bop
Quality: FLAC (tracks + .cue,log,scans) | MP3/320 kbps
Total Time: 01:38:41
Total Size: 663 MB(+3%) | 233 MB(+3%)
WebSite: Album Preview

Tracklist

CD1:

01. What It Is (Waldron) - 17:15
02. Epistrophy (Monk-Clarke) - 6:04
03. Longing (Lacy) - 12:19
04. Monk's Dream (Monk) - 12:53

CD2:

01. Variation of III (Workman) - 24:51
02. Medley: Snake Out (Waldron)/Variations on a Theme by Cecil Taylor (Waldron) - 25:19

Recorded live at DeSingel Arts Center, Antwerp, Belgium, September 30, 1995.

Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy - The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp (2024) CD Rip

personnel :

Steve Lacy - soprano saxophone
Mal Waldron - piano
Reggie Workman - bass
Andrew Cyrille - drums

Jazz pianist Mal Waldron and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy became acquainted at the Five Spot in 1958. The following year, the saxophonist approached Waldron to guest on his New Jazz debut, Reflections: Steve Lacy Plays Thelonious Monk. They continued playing concerts and making records together until Waldron's death in 2002. Both collaborated with multi-disciplinary artists including filmmakers, poets, painters, and sculptors. While their collaboration was by no means prolific, releasing less than 15 albums together -- their duo offerings usually contained compositions by both men -- and idiosyncratic readings of tunes by Monk or Herbie Nichols. The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp is a previously unreleased 1995 quartet concert with drummer Andrew Cyrille and bassist Reggie Workman. Released by the Barcelona-based Elemental Music in collaboration with producer Zev Feldman, the double-disc package contains six long tracks spread over an hour-and-40 minutes.
The program is introduced by Waldron's "What It Is." Well-known to the duo who performed it live on numerous occasions, the pianist initially wrote and recorded it for The Quest (1962). Here it's a swinging meditation on Monk's harmonic phrasing and rhythmic inversions, jazz-blues, post-bop, and intricate improvisation. The pair's stripped-down musical language governs the ensemble play. It's followed by a reading of Monk's "Epistrophy." The rhythm section's fluid interplay provides the soloists with the openness and swing required: Lacy uncovers disguised subtleties in the melody. The saxophonist's "Longing" is up next. Waldron adds rhythmic emphasis to his attack, balanced by wryly humorous fills. The first disc closes with a lithe reading of "Monk's Dream" featuring an ingenious walking solo from Workman as Cyrille answers, then delivers, a brief yet canny solo of his own.
The second disc commences with Workman's "Variations of III," a nearly 25-minute vanguard workout led by his arco playing. Lacy's pointillistic accents and Cyrille's cymbals claim the fore nearly three minutes in as Waldron, in the piano's upper register, places pulsing chordal fragments and strangely articulated harmonic phrases under Lacy's breathing soprano, moving with spirited post-bop engagement by the quartet. The band closes with a medley of Waldron's "Snake-Out" (the title track of a 1982 Waldron-Lacy album) in medley with his "Variations on a Theme by Cecil Taylor," from 1987's solo piano offering Update. At just over 25 minutes, Waldron kicks it off with a blue modal pattern in the lower register. Lacy underscores it by injecting bebop and angular new thing jazz to the piano's labyrinthine accents. Workman's solo is an exercise in circular vamps that, mantra-like, draw listeners in to prepare the ground for Cyrille's rich, varied -- and lengthy -- drum solo. The pianist re-enters with his "Variations on a Theme," that crisscrosses classical and jazz harmony, early film music, and almost-elegant post-bop. Mighty Warriors is a terrific find because of its terrific band, who are so deeply attuned to one another that they perform with warmth, intention, and humor woven through their eclectic yet powerful swing.~ Thom Jurek

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