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| Songs from the Heart: Ramsey Plays Ramsey |
| Ramsey Lewis |
| első megjelenés éve: 2009 |
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| (2009)
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CD |
| 6.249 Ft
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| 1. | To Know Her is to Love Her
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| 2. | Touching, Feeling, Knowing
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| 3. | Clouds in Reverie
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| 4. | The Spark
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| 5. | Conversation
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| 6. | The Way She Smiles
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| 7. | Exhilaration
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| 8. | The Glow of Her Charm
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| 9. | Rendezvous
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| 10. | Long Before She Knew
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| 11. | Sharing Her Journey
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| 12. | Watercolors
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Jazz
American jazz icon Ramsey Lewis, one of the nation's most successful pianists, makes his Concord Jazz debut with these 12 self-penned compositions; his first-ever recording of originals.
Concord Jazz presents Songs From the Heart: Ramsey Plays Ramsey, the debut Concord Jazz CD from iconic pianist/bandleader Ramsey Lewis. At the age of 74, Ramsey Lewis has not only continued to be active in the jazz world, but he's also forging ahead with a newly inspired creative instinct as a composer. This re-envisioned artistic sensibility is showcased on his new album, which is a remarkable, refined collection of 12 new originals that he composed over a period of two years. The collection includes music from two commissioned world premiere performances at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, just north of Chicago. Eight songs come from the score of 2007's ballet To Know Her...written for the Joffrey Ballet Company and four pieces come from 2008's Muses and Amusements suite performed with the Turtle Island Quartet.
Songs From the Heart, Lewis' first trio recording in five years, features eight pieces with bassist Larry Gray and drummer Leon Joyce, and four piano solo performances. To Lewis, the CD marks a turning point in his storied career: he's found new life as a composer.
"Initially nothing was compelling me to go into the studio," says the three-times-Grammy-winner Lewis, who in addition to his 80-plus album career (seven went gold) is also a Chicago-based radio personality and host of the PBS TV series Legends of Jazz. "But since I'd been composing so much and people were responding positively to the new songs, I decided to do an entire album of my own material instead of recording music by other artists."
In regards to his newfound love of composing, he adds, "I'm like a kid on Christmas morning all over again. For me, it's all about the music. It's what makes me sleep well and jump out of bed in the morning to work on new melodies. I can't wait."
Lewis says that his early hits-most prominently his mid-‘60s international breakout tunes "The ‘In' Crowd," "Hang on Sloopy" and "Wade in the Water"-in some ways spoiled him. "Darn those hits," he says jokingly. "In the early days with the trio I wrote more, but once you get so popular you tend to get a little lazy. It comes to a point where you compose three or four songs for a new album, then one or two seems to suffice."
In 2006, Welz Kauffman, the president/CEO of Ravinia, suggested that Lewis, the jazz artistic director there, compose a score for the Joffrey. The pianist met with the ballet company's then- executive director Jon Teeuwissen and then set forth to work on an hour's worth of material. He was in for a rude awakening. "I sat down at the piano and all I could think of was Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev and music for classical ballet," he says. "As I sat at the piano with no ideas, my wife Jan told me, ‘I'm hearing you and you're suffering. Why don't you just turn on a tape recorder and play?' I told her, ‘But I'm trying to compose.'"
However, Lewis took her advice and began to discover melodies as he improvised. His breakthrough song is the CD's leadoff track, the lyrical "To Know Her Is to Love Her." More tunes quickly followed even without using the tape recorder ("It was almost like writing shorthand," says Lewis), and he presented the eight compositions to Joffrey choreographer Donald Byrd. "He liked my old hits, but he had nothing but superlatives for the new material," says Lewis, who notes that one tune, "Clouds in Reverie," was a version of a piece written for the previous year's Ravinia project, One Score, One Chicago: New Scenes From Childhood.
Joffrey choreography began in April 2007 for the June 2007 performance. A month before the premiere Lewis saw his first rehearsal. The troupe put his recorded demos on and began to dance. "The way they moved brought tears to my eyes," says Lewis. "When I started out in bands when I was 16, people danced to our music. This took me back 50 years, and here I was writing for dancing again."
At Ravinia, the performance garnered a rousing applause from the audience and critical plaudits from the press. Lewis says, "My son pointed out to me that this was the first concert of mine he had seen that got a standing ovation without me having to play the hits. That told me something about focusing more intently on composition."
Kauffman was so impressed that he immediately commissioned Lewis to write new works for Ravinia in 2008. He decided to compose for a string quartet to accompany his trio. On the recommendation of his good friend and fellow pianist Dr. Billy Taylor, Lewis enlisted the Turtle Island Quartet to perform a suite of eight new originals, including the relaxed-swinging "The Spark" and the bowed ballad "The Conversation." Of the former, Lewis says, "I like the energy in this song. I was thinking of a groove-not rock, but something that had an element of excitement and forward motion while at the same time was melodic."
From the ballet score, Lewis explains that the emotive tune "Touching, Feeling, Knowing" is based on a folk melody he heard when he visited Soweto, South Africa. "It's a simple melody that I used as the basis for this song. When we play it, it reminds me of South Africa." In regards to the appropriately titled "The Way She Smiles," Lewis says, "That's one of those songs that just happened. I woke up one morning and was thinking of a New Orleans groove."
One of the added bonuses of Lewis' prolific writing has been an enrichment of his pianistic talent. "The composing has informed my playing," says Lewis. "I'm looking at harmony and melody in a different way. I've noticed that my solos have become deeper and more contemplative." On Songs From the Heart, Lewis takes the solo spotlight four times, including the film noir-ish "Long Before She Knew" and reflective muse "The Glow of Her Charm."
The latter arrived when Lewis was working on an intro to the song "In the Still of the Night" that he was performing one evening in Washington, D.C. He was in his hotel room on a grand piano, determined to find a prelude. Once again, his wife offered her wisdom. "Jan was listening to me and said, ‘What's that? That's a song, not an introduction. You've got a new song.' And, if course, she was right."
On Songs From the Heart, Lewis offers graceful music, played with a light, gentle, joyful touch, and focused on melody. Writing in the CD liner notes, Lewis pointed out that in the CD's initial planning stages, all artistic and record company parties agreed that Songs From the Heart should be characterized by "heartfelt, lyrical and inspirational" music "that my fans had come to expect."
In the liners, Lewis also noted, "Our desire was to convey a sense of beauty, joy, simplicity and lyricism...I am extremely proud of the results." He adds, "Looking back at all the music that I've written over the last few years, I think I'm coming up with something unique. I think I'm developing a style."
Ramsey Lewis is not only thriving in his golden years, but continues to refine his approach within the tried-and-true piano-bass-drums trio format. Alongside his longtime bandmates featuring the very talented bassist Larry Gray and drummer Leon Joyce, Lewis has chosen to present an all-original program inspired by his collaborative concert stage work with the Joffrey Ballet Company, or the Turtle Island String Quartet. With elegance, panache, and a little bit of soul, Lewis and his group breeze through these selections, and while the pianist has his own approach to shadings and lyricism, there's no doubt he is also reflecting the muse and sage wisdom of another great jazz player who made his mark in Chicago, Ahmad Jamal. Lewis crafts lovely themes shaded in little or no drama via the light bossa nova dance traipse of "Touching, Feeling, Knowing," the easygoing contemporary funk of "The Spark," or the tango, soul-jazz inflected "The Way She Smiles." Not all laid-back, the trio is led by the irrepressible Gray, who pushes through "Exhilaration" all the way through, runs through an ostinato bassline on the driving, Brazilian, Jamal-styled beats of "Rendezvous," and uses a bouncy, hip, 6/8 mode for the classy, bouncy "To Know Her Is to Love Her," accented by the chiming piano of Lewis. While the backbone of these recordings is the sophistication of the piano player in the ensemble tracks, there are four solo pieces that further illuminate this grand dame concerto concept. "Clouds in Reverie" perfectly reflects its title, "Conversation" is an elegiac, epic, musical love tale in the class of "Exodus" or "Spartacus," "The Glow of Her Charm" reflects delicacy but merges into some forceful moments, while "Watercolors" uses up-and-down dynamics, not normally the strong suit of the pianist. Of the many watered-down commercial efforts and overproduced music Ramsey Lewis has offered on big commercial labels, this one could easily be his most accessible to a legitimate jazz audience. It certainly is his very best recording in the last two decades of his star-studded career, and can certainly be recommended to all lovers, dreamers, and mainstream jazz listeners in general. ~ Michael G. Nastos, All Music Guide
Ramsey Lewis
Active Decades: '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: May 27, 1935 in Chicago, IL
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Crossover Jazz, Jazz-Pop, Soul-Jazz
Ramsey Lewis has long straddled the boundary between bop-oriented jazz and pop music. Most of his recordings (particularly by the mid-'60s) were very accessible and attracted a large non-jazz audience. In 1956, he formed a trio with bassist Eldee Young and drummer Red Holt. From the start (1958), their records for ArgoCadet were popular, although in the early days, they had a strong jazz content. In 1958, Lewis also recorded with Max Roach and Lem Winchester. On the 1965 albums The In Crowd and Hang On, Ramsey made the pianist into a major attraction and from that point, on his records became much more predictable and pop-oriented. In 1966, his trio's personnel changed with bassist Cleveland Eaton and drummer Maurice White (later the founder of Earth, Wind & Fire) joining Lewis. In the 1970s, Lewis often played electric piano, although by later in the decade he was sticking to acoustic and hiring an additional keyboardist. He can still play melodic jazz when he wants to, but Ramsey Lewis has mostly stuck to easy listening pop music during the past 30 years. In 2004 he released Time Flies, a look back at some of his most popular songs through new recordings.
---Scott Yanow, All Music Guide |
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