Customer Reviews

Adventures in Jazz

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

MY FAVORITE KENTON ALBUM! (A tough choice, because I have them ALL !) I waited YEARS for this re-issue, having long since worn out my vinyl copy completely.

In 1963 Stan added a section of mellophoniums (a sort of hybrid, bell-front french horn with pistons, that he and G.C.Conn in Elkhart, Indiana, co-invented) to the band. Since a 14-piece brass section was bigger than a lot of road bands' total number of musicians, the economics of it only allowed Stan to keep it for a little more than a year, but it was the most-recorded edition of the Kenton band. Just listen to Gabe Baltazar's alto, with the mellophones hanging above it, on "Stairway To The Stars" and you'll be hooked for good, too! The band heard here is another one of those Kenton All-Star editions. There are Gabe Baltazar, Sam Donohue, Marv Stamm and Dee Barton, just to name a few. (Check out Sam Donohue on "Body and Soul." Yes, that really IS a tenor saxophone way up there, making the guy on "Saturday Night Live" sound like a beginner!). Add great arrangements from Dee Barton, Johnny Richards, Bill Holman and others, and it's just plain hard NOT to love this album. 5 stars ! (just because they don't offer SIX ! )

As I say above, this is one of the best Kenton albums in my opinion. All the elements are there, screaming brass, soaring reeds! There are two compositions, Turtle Talk and Waltz of the Prophets, by Dee Barton. These are complex charts that really sound great, and are still accessible. Who could forget Bill Holman's arrangement of Malaguena? This song embodies the Kenton sound. It is one of the best! The tenor sax solo on Body and Soul is amazing, Ive never heard anyone else do that with the instrument.

THIS is the full sound of the Stan Kenton Band. I know of no other Kenton album that soars so high, engulphs so warmly, and drives so hard and so fully as this "Adventures In Jazz" album. It's the individual players, every one of the 22 of them, and Stan on piano, that pack enough energy into this album that make even professional players say things like " GOOD GOD ! ", and "LOOK OUT !", and "I can't believe that there could be SO MUCH POWER - WHEW !. And I like the music too !"

This album is not for the feint of heart, nor the quiet retiring moments, nor for romantic dancing. This is not dinner music, it's not easy listening, and it's not smooth jazz. As best I can do to describe it, is to say that this is the big boys music, by and for men, and the women who can handle it.

Braham & Furber's "Lime House Blues" is taken at a tempo way, way, way up around 240 beats per minute - and hang on from there out. Errol Garner's "Misty" is a real soundscape for the enormous sound you'll hear on a decent hi-fi system. The whole sound will not come out of speakers smaller than 12", because there is so much rich shading to be heard.

In Lime House Blues, drummer Jerry McKenzie and bassist Pat Senatore start it out there at 240 bpm, and then keep it there for 4 1/2 minutes. Every section of the band is heard, and some great solos too, all by the fabulous musicianship and talents of every band member.

The other 5 tracks are each soundscape experiences in their own right. And it's all organic, with no electronics anywhere.

If you ask what it's all like, I'll just say that it's "expanded big band music, on nitromethane". You'll need real muscle in your ears and your brain for this one.

Dan McGarigle, 2005
Los Angeles, CA

poor stan was a love him or hate him. anyone who hears this album cannot do anything but love him and his arrangers and muscians. some have said the kenton bands didnot swing here again i say hear this it does move! this is the best thing mr. kenton ever did. i agree with one of the other reviewers that the solo by sam donahue is incredible. please mr. capital-blue note give us more!

This CD is great. I enjoy jazz, but I only own a couple of recordings of jazz. As a musician myself (trombone), I find the orchestration very entertaining. There are a great variety of sounds and the solos are interesting. I had heard this particular recording of Malaguena long ago and it is one of my favorite songs. Waltz of the Prophets also has a very bizzarre couple of solos.
Overall, great instrumentation, arranging, and performance. It's one of my prized CDs and has made me more interested in jazz.

This album combines fine soloists, spectacular arrangements, and the wild sophistication that make it one of the best-remembered collections of Kenton's music. Stand-out soloists include Marvin Stamm on trumpet, Gabe Baltazar on alto, Sam Donahue on tenor, and Ray Starling on mellophonium. (Yes, this is the mellophonium band, in a studio recording from 1961.) The arrangements come from Bill Holman, Dee Barton, Gene Roland, Lennie Niehaus, and Donahue.
Barton's "Turtle Talk" and Holman's unforgettable "Malagueña" stayed in Kenton's book into the late 1970s. "Stairway to the Stars" is a wonderful alto feature for Baltazar, slow at beginning and end but swinging in the middle. "Limehouse Blues" cooks along, and Stamm contributes a brilliantly relentless trumpet solo. "Misty" is Starling's mellophonium feature, giving it a flavor that sets it apart from the numerous other renditions of this jazz standard. Donohue is brilliant on his own arrangement of "Body and Soul," finishing the tune with one of the most impressive demonstrations of the extreme upper range of the tenor sax that you'll ever hear.
The CD includes a bonus track (the gorgeous Niehaus arrangement of "It Might As Well Be Spring") and two alternate takes ("Waltz of the Prophets" and "Body and Soul"). I usually find that alternate takes add nothing to an album, and that's certainly the case here.
The least appealing thing on this album is Dee Barton's solo work on "Turtle Talk" and especially "Waltz of the Prophets." He appears to have no facility in the upper range of the trombone, yet he goes there anyway and produces some poorly articulated raspy noises that clearly demonstrate he's a better arranger than a soloist. Despite this, I highly recommend this CD.

Awesome album. Band sounds great. Maleguena is an excellent chart, though Watlz is a little heavy.

Stan Kenton may not have been quite as experimental as the great Don Ellis. But Stan is the great Stan Kenton--the only band leader of his era who gave the great Don a run for his money.

Look at this cover: see how the pictures are arranged in that angular, fifties style? A lot of Stan's covers have such designs, and that gives you a great indication of what the music was like.

Kenton swung, but on top of the swing were abstract tone bursts, complex chord movements, dense voicings. You could not, in the strict sense, call this dissonence, but Stan reveled in creating thorny rhytm blotches, sudden splaches of atonality.

But this music moves--fast. It speeds through its own complication, becomming amazingly accessable.

Don't be fooled, though. Sublime as it is, this is some of the most complex and fufilling jazz of its time, our time, any time