DON RENDELL — Live (as Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet) (review)

DON RENDELL — Live (as Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet) album cover Live album · 1969 · Post Bop Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Sean Trane
With that particularly ugly artwork, one might not be immediately-drawn to this Live album, but let t be known that it’s not a usual RCQ live gig that was put on wax, but a full-fledged album filled with new tracks. Recorded live in one evening session in a London studio in the spring of 69 in front of a small audience, mostly a press and arts crowd, but are they (RCQ) ever sparked-up for the event.

Opening on the impressive Garrick-penned On Track, which starts slowly before reaching bouts of breakneck-speed Gypsy-jazz passages and follows later on some outstanding jiving from all five concerned, you enter the album with the necessary enthusiasm that might have lacked at the view of the ugly record sleeve. A little more standard-y is Vignette, a gentle ballad that opens itself to both Carr’s muted trumpet and Rendell’s clarinet, soon followed by the excellent Pavane, where the successive moods are all-over the map, and Green’s bass quite enthralling, while Carr’s solo is certainly one of his best. According to the liner notes, Nimjam was played before Pavane, and it’ was a rather-standard-y piece that was given to them a few years back by Jeff Headley, but it’s a 100 mph piece that speeds too fast for its own good.

The second part of the set includes the 13-mins Garrick piece Voices, that starts out hauntingly enough with a delicious flute, but loses part of its charm in the bass-solo middle section, but gains much of it with Carr’s muffled trumpet solo and Garrick’s raga-piano going wild and Rendell’s flabbergasting flute. Difficult (if not impossible) to follow-up such an amazing epic jazz piece, so the Quintet moves on to a Ragtime-piano piece at first, but it’s all lost on this writer, still up in them vocal clouds of the previous piece.

Well, this Live-studio album is definitely another worthy RCQ album, maybe a tad superior to P3 (more outstanding tracks), but still a distant second to Dusk Fire. Well, the 2on2 BGO label reissue is definitely worth the acquisition (you won’t miss the massacred ugly artwork anyway), because it features a good 50% of really interesting and groundbreaking pieces. My ultimate fantasy would’ve been for their incredible Dusk Fire album being coupled to Live and P3’s most adventurous track, but let dreams remains dreams…
Share this review
more

Review Comments

Post a public comment below | Send private message to the reviewer
Please login to post a shout
No shouts posted yet. Be the first member to do so above!

Review Index

Member Zone

Username:
Password:
Stay signed in

Jazz Subgenres

Artists Alpha-index

JMA TOP 5 Jazz ALBUMS

Rating by members, ranked by custom algorithm
Albums with 30 ratings and more
A Love Supreme Post Bop
JOHN COLTRANE
Buy this album from our partners
Kind of Blue Cool Jazz
MILES DAVIS
Buy this album from our partners
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady Progressive Big Band
CHARLES MINGUS
Buy this album from our partners
Blue Train Hard Bop
JOHN COLTRANE
Buy this album from our partners
My Favorite Things Hard Bop
JOHN COLTRANE
Buy this album from our partners

New Jazz Artists

New Jazz Releases

Goncalo Almeida / Rutger Zuydervelt : Eventual Jazz Related Improv/Composition
GONÇALO ALMEIDA
Buy this album from MMA partners
Illimitable Avant-Garde Jazz
MATT MITCHELL
Buy this album from MMA partners
The Hermetic Organ Volume 12 - The Bosch Requiem Jazz Related Improv/Composition
JOHN ZORN
Buy this album from MMA partners
Jonesville Eclectic Fusion
ACCELERATION DUE TO GRAVITY
Buy this album from MMA partners
Ivo Perelman + Tom Rainey : Duologues 1 - Turning Point Avant-Garde Jazz
IVO PERELMAN
Buy this album from MMA partners
More new releases

New Jazz Online Videos

Miles Away
ALEX MERCK
js· 1 day ago
Stablemates
RON BLAKE
js· 3 days ago
Critique of Swing in Two Parts, Pt. 1
PIOTR ORZECHOWSKI (PIANOHOOLIGAN)
js· 3 days ago
FULL ALBUM - Oliver Lutz - Utopia w/ Leif Berger, Constantin Krahmer
OLIVER LUTZ
js· 4 days ago
Lift
DAVE WILSON (US/NZ)
js· 6 days ago
More videos

New JMA Jazz Forum Topics

More in the forums

New Site interactions

More...

Latest Jazz News

members-submitted

More in the forums

Social Media

Follow us
Follow us on Twitter Become a Facebook fan RSS Feed