help me find.....

im looking for some new music.im after some jazz piano stuff.im a big fan of oscar peterson and herbie hancock so if you could point me in the right direction i would be mucho gratefull.looking for something funky yet traditional if you know what i mean.

cheers,

Rob.

 

First port of call should be Horace Silver (see the teetering on the plinque thread) and in particular his Blue Note albums from the late 50s / early 60s.
A rather good young pianist from Cuba is Omar Sosa - start with "sentir". Warning: non traditional and and *spiritually* funky.
That`s a start.

 

Horace Silver's a good choice. Also check out Art Tatum, and Blue Note (1940s) and Riverside (1950s) era Monk ("Genius of Modern Music" Vols 1 and 2 and "Brilliant Corners" are both pretty funky, in a Monk-ish way. Munky, perhaps).

-- Ian

 

I second Monk "Genius of Modern Music" vols 1 & 2. Hadn't listened to it for ages so I've just stuck in on

Wow - an album that I have in common with Ian Be a while before I get into "extreme noise terror" though

Michael.

 

thanks guys, will have a little session on slsk and give em a listen.

 

Sounds like you *are* ready for the next level, Michael... Since you dig Monk, you'll have zero problem with Cecil Taylor
In many ways Cecil is more "normal" than Monk. You could almost call Cecil a free Blues player.
Wonder what Ian thinks of that idea?

 

I went the other way, from Cecil Taylor to Monk.

Taylor was the first "jazz" pianist I ever really got into. I remember buying one of his solo albums when I was about 17 ("Air Above Mountains") and I couldn't stop playing it, even though I hadn't a clue what sort of animal it was. The f**k you power and speed of it were amazing.

My take on Taylor is that his work from the late 70s onwards owes nothing to the blues, and almost nothing to jazz either. It's become Cecil Music, its own genre, in which all his influences are so assimilated, mutated, and superseded that he's doing something completely sui generis. But I can see the connections with the blues, with Monk (and Ellington, especially) in earlier Taylor, records like Jazz Advance, the World of Cecil Taylor, and Nefertiti the Beautiful One Has Come. I read an interview with him recently in which the only other player he cites as an influence is Ellington. All his other stated influences are singers (Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday), dancers, and poets. I'd really like to work out some of those connections.

Also, I should have mentioned Bud Powell before. Any of his early records (and especially The Amazing Bud Powell vols 1 and 2) are wonderful. One of my favourite pianists, influenced by Monk but with his own sound and intelligence.

-- Ian

 

Yes, Bud Powell was a sadly underrated genius.
I love the early Cecil albums you mentioned, maybe because I came to jazz from the blues and I always tilt towards jazz which, no matter how free, still draws from that spiritual well. Cecil's early output is amazing.