Four Altos by Gene Quill, Phil Woods, Sahib Shihab, Hal Stein

Four Altos

Available from Amazon
Usually ships in 6 to 9 days

Four Altos

Features

Audio CD (July 1, 1991)

Number of Discs: 1

Label: Ojc

Catalog Number: 1734

Reader Reviews
It's true, this album is not essential in the proper meaning of the term. It is just one of the hundreds blowing session dates that has been made in that magic 1957. But this one is an extremely good album anyway. It's a bebop album, a blowing session on common Jazz vehicles in the manner Bird would do. To quote Lennie Tristano "Bird could ask royalties for every record made since his", and that's true because he was the most important innovator in the whole history of Jazz music. Jazz was never the same after Bird's coming and legions of players (I might say every Jazz musician his contemporary or follower) learned his lessons and played the way he intended jazz has to be played. Nothing's wrong with it in my opinion. We can't ask to any musician to be a timeless genius and to invent another musical universe like Bird was and did, but this does not make the music of this lesser players less enjoyable. This album proves it. Four alto players here plays some contrafacts (Jazz standards chord progressions with different theme for not paying royalties) in a strictly Parker fashion but did a really good job. They were not even clones (and certainly not "clowns") in a sense because playing in the Parker manner was the only thing to do then and they do it well by the way. Sure these four alto players were parkerians, but I love Parker like I think every jazz enthusiast so listen to parkerian music is always a pleasure for me. And I love to listen to blowing sessions too because they are the true essence of Jazz music so I really enjoyed this album. I agree with the other reviewer that this is not "essential" (this is why I didn't give it five stars) but the music is absolutly good (this is why I give it four). And how could be different. It was the magic 1957 the zenith of Jazz music ...

Back To Top