Elvin Jones Music

This is the cover art for MAL/2 which I have and dig. The personel for MAL/3 from a cataloge I have is Art Farmer trumpet,Eric Dixon tenor sax, Mal Waldron piano, Calo Scott cello, Julian Euell bass, Elvin Jones drums, and Elaine Waldron vocal(s). MAL/4 and IMPRESSIONS are fair enough late night trio outings from late 50's Prestige.

This musical document represents a significant example of the level to which Africa has influenced European music. The quintessential European instrument, the piano, is here played percussively. The drums are played melodically, and "talk", and create a "soundscape" (witness the shimmering waves created by the cymbals of Mr Jones behind Mr Taylor during his solo on track 6) whilst the saxophone of Mr Redman mimics the human voice so important in African music. The three artists have contributed much to the development of music over the past 40 years. We owe them a debt of gratitude. This is an excellent example of their art. Although conversations prevail, the soliloquy on track two by Mr Jones has an almost perfect structure and is a powerful testimony to Afro-American drumming. We do miss something though. Just as it is a revelation to have witnessed Mr Thelonious Monk "play" the piano, so it is revelatory to visually witness the plasticity, the melding, of Mr Taylor with his instrument and with the music - dance, sculpture and sound interweave to make a more emotionally powerful experience. In the meantime, we will just have to close our eyes and imagine as we listen intently to the music on this CD. Superbly engineered by Jay Newland. Thanks to The Creative Music Institute.

I got this record last Christmas and immediately made a tape of it for my car - I had to listen to it all the time. All three giants sound great, the album has nice liner notes, and I love the Einsteinian notion of "Momentum Space" as it relates to this transformative restructuralist music. Elvin Jones made another wonderful trio album a few years ago with his brother Hank and George Mraz in tribute to his brother Thad. "Momentum Space" has a different kind of beauty. Check it out! : )

Three masters of forward-looking jazz coming together to create....something brilliant.

Okay, fine, sometimes the idea of the "meeting of the masters" can disappoint, but not here. The album, although not a trio album per-se, features brilliant solo work and interaction between the musicians.

What I found particularly interesting is the breaking down of the group into duos for the different compositions. Doing so creates an entirely different world of sound. Redman and Jones w/out Cecil Taylor results in groovy, hip music. Taylor and Jones is this amazing sonic barrage of notes and rhythms (neither instrument is at the forefront, it's great). And so on...

So, yes, this is an album that lives up to the promises on the cover. It is well-worth the investment.

I've been playing this intermixed with Glenn Gould's "Bach's Goldberg Variations", and actually enjoy this more! The first track "Nine" reminds me of atoms (of type Redman, Taylor, and Jones) colliding together in musical space. Very ingenious! All three musicians , although rarely intersecting in the time dimension, create complementary musical space with respect to one another. This was my first major exposure to Cecil Taylor's style of piano, and I must listen to more of him. He and Jones complement each other well, in that I've always thought of Jones as a "lyrical drummer", while Taylor seems to be able to create interesting percussion sounds with his piano.

This album was a surprise when it first appeared: while Cecil Taylor, Dewey Redman & Elvin Jones are all masters of forwardlooking 1960s jazz, one would hardly expect such individual & differently-oriented players to gel together. Jones, despite the enormous complexity of the rhythms & sounds he creates, has typically still preferred to maintain the drums' timekeeping role (having left Coltrane's band, for instance, as Coltrane moved more and more towards completely "free" playing). Taylor, on the other hand, has since the early 1960s become the leading exponent of a highly percussive & rhythmic but freely-measured piano style.

This recording, as most reviewers have noted, is misleadingly packaged as a trio recording, when only the first and sixth tracks (ten and twenty minutes long, respectively) have all three musicians together. I'm inclined to think this not necessarily a bad thing: the shorter of the two tracks, "Nine", is an amazing confrontation, perhaps the best thing on the album; the 20-minute track, "Is", is I think the one weak track on the disc, episodic & rambling. It's telling that on "Nine" Jones elects to play in time, while on "Is" he tries for free-tempo playing.

But with the exception of "Is"--which anyway has its moments too--the rest of this album is first-rate. There's a fine, melodic drum solo by Jones; a nice solo piece by Taylor; a brilliant duet between Redman & Jones; and a good duo between Taylor & Jones. A brief Redman solo ends the disc--it's only 49 seconds & is sufficiently good I wish there were more. So, despite my reservations about the one (longest) track, there's plenty on here that deserves a listen.