STANLEY CLARKE — The Rite of Strings (feat. Al Di Meola & Jean-Luc Ponty) (review)

STANLEY CLARKE — The Rite of Strings (feat. Al Di Meola & Jean-Luc Ponty) album cover

Album · 1995 · World Fusion

5/5 · 2011-04-28
Zarathustra

I’ve chosen “The Rite of Strings” for my first review on Jazz Music Archives because this is the album that restored my interest and hope in jazz music. I only heard (of) it three years ago when I accidentally downloaded the song “Renaissance”—which I knew and thought I was getting from the 1975 album “Aurora.” It wasn’t. Then I discovered YouTube had some videos of Jean-Luc, Stanley and Al on tour from 1994. To see Stanley alone on the upright was majestic—so reminiscent of the great playing I had come to hear and see with Diana Krall, and from Eddie Gomez and Ron Carter from the sixties and seventies, and, of course, the amazing Scott LaFaro. This is the jazz I so loved but thought I’d reached the highest, most sacred ground with Bill Evans—and which I thought had died with Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” and the advent of the midi- and Synclavier technologies. (No offence, Msrs McLaughlin, Hancock, DiMeola, Ponty, Holdsworth, Corea, and Bruford.) Actually, the “techno-death” of 70s jazz fusion spured me into a glorious foray into old, “purer” jazz musics—including lots of big band, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Oscar and Ella, Duke, Sinatra, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, and Monk. Ah, Monk! Such an education I received there. (I thought I was “open” to music until I heard Monk!) The wonderful 1986 movie “Round Midnight” got me moving into more “modern” jazz: Dexter, Lester, Bird, Dizzie, Miles, and more. “Kind of Blue” got me diving into Adderly, Coltrane and Bill Evans. With Bill—and especially his Riverside live recordings form the Village Vanguard—I reached satori—a place from which I didn’t feel the need to continue my search. I was done with jazz. Or so I thought. Ten years of getting to know “classical” music, Minimalism, and even opera, fell away into no music. I guess I’d reached satiety. Hearing “The Rite of Strings” coincided with my reawakening to music—that there was, indeed, new and interesting musics still being made, still undiscovered. But, of all the albums I’ve now bathed in during the past four years, I’ve heard none that please and impress me so well as this one. The dudes put it all out there with some stellar playing on some absolutely gorgeous tunes. While many may complain of the relative lack of pyrotechnics and overall feel-good vibe to the album, I derive great joy and energy from this album—every song, start to finish—everytime I play it (which is frequently). Plus, I’m an owner and frequent viewer of the “Live at Montreux-1994” DVD from which this CD received it’s inspiration. This is NOT from the concert, but rather studio versions of some of the songs they had done in their 1994 tour. The songs are rather less flashy here (Buy the DVD: it’s amazing!) but a very polished representation of this amazing collaboration.