Live at the Village Vanguard [Live]

David Murray | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 2, 2003)
• Original Release Date: August 12, 2003
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Label: 441 Records
• ASIN: B0000AOV40
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #257,958 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Red Car

2. The Desegregation of Our Children

3. Acoustic Octofunk

4. Hope Scope

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Soaring but Ragged., April 4, 2004

By 

A. K. L. "flamotte" (Steilacoom, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Live at the Village Vanguard (Audio CD)

With all due respect to the other reviewers, I who am a Murray fan find this live performance disappointing, due not so much to Murray himself - whose beautiful tone and wild flights of creative energy are characteristically exciting -- but to the rhythm section. An improvisor as daring as Murray (I have him on my listmania of '25 Unsung Tenor Sax Heros') needs a solid, precise rhythm section to keep him grounded. He doesn't get it here.

The best parts of the session are Murray's bass clarinet cadenza, where he is freed from the other instruments; and the moving 'Desegregation of Our Children,' the one slow piece of the session, where Murray's stunning tenor rises from his warm, burgundy, low register tones to a soaring altissima chant. During this piece, the piano is lyrical in accompaniment and the drums are hushed to brushwork. There is hypnotic and subtle interaction between all the members of the quartet. The listener longs for more quiet and contemplative interactions like this. But the rest of the CD is ragged and noisey.

The piano player, Hilton Ruiz, tends to imitate the late Don Pullen on the up-tempo pieces, but he can't quite bring off Pullen's percussive piano clusters. In other words, he does a lot of atonal banging on the keys. The bass, Kelly Roberty, is poorly recorded: muffled lumps of wet cotton. The real problem is the drummer, Pheroon Aklaf, who sounds amateurish on most of the session: he gets lost in ragged gratuitous rolls and can't keep even 4/4 time steady.

For a more outstanding quartet session, I recommend 'Lovers.'

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Murray sound!, December 21, 2003

By 

Michael Javier (Lanexa, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Live at the Village Vanguard (Audio CD)

David Murray displays on this 1995 live recording once again his incredible sound on the saxophone. Murray is a great mix of blues and gospel tradition expressed with a gritty, yet gorgeous tone that knows no bounds. The only caveat to this program is the less than sterling sound quality on this Sound Hills product, and the track listing that indicates the presence of one more song than actually appears on the cd. Label issues aside though, Murray is in top form with these extended tracks blowing in the fabled Village Vanguard setting both powerfully and tenderly. Murray has a rich deep resonant tone on the saxophone that ranks with the most beautiful in the history of jazz. His sound emerges from the Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster school and is the antithesis of the lightweight, whimsical tone now seemingly in favor with the listening public. This is jazz on the cutting edge with a bite, steeped in tradition, with an avant-garde edge, but at the sametime capable of delivering a ballad such as The Desegregation Of Our Children with such uncommon beauty and emotion that you are left scratching your head as to why this modern titan is not esteemed more highly by the jazz buying public.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary, December 26, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Live at the Village Vanguard (Audio CD)

David Murray and his group have taken the legacy of "Live at the Village Vanguard" and returned it to it's rightful place for the jazz listener. Murray shines and the quartet as a whole has an unbelieveable communication. Kelly Roberty's bass is rock solid and his solos are a wonderful display of how to give a tune a signature. Aklaff and Ruiz are, as always, right in the music. But this CD as it is the stuff of legends.