Dance With Death

COMENTARIO

Como ya sucedió con Passing Ships, reeditado en 2003, los grabaciones del pianista y compositor Andrew Hill que vuelven a ver la luz suscitan un enorme interés, lógico si tenemos en cuenta que estamos ante uno de los mayores innovadores a partir de las técnicas del bop y el hard bop. No es una excepción este Dance of Death, un verdadero acontecimiento para muchos seguidores.
Grabado en 1968 en formato de quinteto, el disco es un ejercicio de exploración pos hard bop. Abstracto, sinuoso, complejo, de acordes atractivos, Hill probó ser un verdadero experto de los tiempos y la espontaneidad. Si algo hay que alabar además de este registro es el magnífico trabajo de Joe Farrell, con solos notables, y Charles Tolliver, en plena forma.

Dance With Death
.

Pistas:

1. Yelow Violet
2. Partitions
3. Fish in Rice
4. Dance with Death
5. Love Nocturne
6. Black Sabbath

Créditos:

Joe Farrell - Sax (Soprano), Sax (Tenor)
Billy Higgins - Drums
Andrew Hill - Piano
Victor Sproles - Bass
Charles Tolliver - Trumpet

Andrew Hill - Dance With Death .2004 . Recording Date Oct 11, 1968 . Label Blue Note . Genre Styles Jazz Post-Bop Avant-Garde Jazz --- Después del éxito de Passing Ships, se reedita en 24 bits "Dance with Death", otro extraordinario trabajo grabado en 1968 por Andrew Hill acompañado por Joe Farrell

Review by Thom Jurek

Andrew Hill's Dance of Death, recorded in 1968 with a stellar band, was not issued until 1980. IN the late 1960s, Blue Note was no longer the most adventurous of jazz labels. While certain titles managed to scrape through — Eddie Gale's Ghetto Music did but only because Francis Wollf personally financed it — many didn't. The label was firmly in the soul-jazz groove by then, and Hill's music, always on the edge, was deemed too outside for the label's roster. Musically, this is Hill at his most visionary. From hard- and post bop frames come modal and tonal inquiries of staggering complexity. Accompanied by trumpeter Charles Tolliver, saxophonist Joe Farrell, drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Victor Sproles, Hill engages, seemingly, all of his muses at once. Check out the sinister modal blues that is "Fish 'N' Rice" with its loping Eastern-tinged blues and loping horn lines around Hill's knotty fills in the head and choruses. In "Partitions" the steaming head is so rigorously tangled it's only the counterpoint of Hill's piano that makes an exit possible, with deep blues underpinnings and strident swinging soul. The title cut dances Afro-Cuban in the head, but Hill's piano is in a minor modal groove, with Higgins playing a textural, syncopated four-four as Sproles' punches on the two and four as the solos begin winding through the modes, bringing back the blues on tags. Dance of Death is a phenomenal record, one that wears its adventure and authority well.