Customer Reviews

Live at Carnegie Hall

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3 star:		(1)
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Those familiar with the outstanding work of the big bands led by Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin will need no encouragement to snap up this album. From their first, Kogun (1974), there has been consistent excellence with the tasteful blending of modern big band jazz and Japanese culture and history. The present album is no exception, coming from the period after 1982 when the band relocated from the West to the East coast. While there were fewer albums, each was worth the wait. Thankfully Mosaic's recent Select set containing the first five studio albums (1974-1977) might prompt a long overdue rediscovery of this wonderful outfit. Everything about it spells perfection: distinctive melodic compositions and arrangements, Lew Tabackin's outstanding tenor and flute work and an array of top soloists from both coasts. This Carnegie Hall concert shows the band at its best and is highly recommended.

When I first heard this compilation several years ago at a Border's Bookstore, I knew I had to buy it. I have since listened to it recently again after several years, and I must say it is one of the best Jazz CDs I own! The parts are brilliantly integrated into a whole, as the main themes come back again and again, but for some reason it is not just a mere return of recognition, but a return filled with such emotion and resolution that you can't help but really feel it. The sounds blend the best of swing and big-band orchestration, but in a decidedly modernist dissonant timbre that makes for the beauty of the resolution. Irresistably beautiful sound!

Freddie Hubbard guests on some of the tracks here, and each of his solos betrays his extremely weakend chops. He consistently strives for notes which he cannot reach, or cannot reach without sounding extremely strained. Indeed, his presence lends a certain nervous quality to a lot of these tracks. He does have his moments, as always, though. Lew Tabackin has quite a few moments, sounding better and more probing than on many of the original albums Akiyoshi's band released in the 70s. The "Kourakan Suite" is definitely an extended piece with many merits, and some of the other tunes are very catchy in a way only Toshiko's tunes are.