And how are all the little dreams that never did come true?– Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger
Given how strong an identity Cory Weeds’ Cellar Music from Canada has forged for itself in recent years for swinging, straightahead, bop, styles it’s no surprise the idiom landed upon here. But what’s the twist?
There isn’t really one apart from the fact that there aren’t any drums.
Candlelight and wine
Of the band pianist Miles Black hails from British Columbia and is based according to his website in Vancouver where this was recorded. He has been in Trilogy since 2009. The band his site says is ”fashioned” after the jazz trios of Oscar Peterson and Nat King Cole.
Recorded at the Monarch studio last year tunes include Charlie Parker’s ‘Moose the Mooche,’ Trilogy bassist Jodi Proznick’s waltz ‘Luna,’ Dick Rogers’ ‘Pompton Turnpike’ – which is about the Meadowbrook Inn in Cedar Grove, New Jersey recorded by Charlie Barnet in the 1940s (and the BBC Big Band a half century later) – Randy Weston’s ‘Hi Fly’ recorded by the Jazz Messengers early on and Jimmy Van Heusen’s ‘I Thought About You’ led off thumpingly by Proznick.
Many’s the time that we feasted, And many’s the time that we fasted
Highlights on this very unobtrusive newly issued album include Black’s very loving introduction to Jobim’s ‘Luiza’ where Scott Hamilton is very Stan Getz like in response – delicate and communicative. Lee Konitz did a beautiful version of the song in the 1990s with Peggy Stern on The Jobim Collection and later with Paul Motian and Steve Swallow on Three Guys.
Also a great choice guitarist Bill Coon does the requisite Oscar Moore touches on Rainger and Robin’s ‘Thanks for the Memory’ a song that won an Oscar for best original song for The Big Broadcast of 1938. It is synonymous with Bob Hope and Shirley Ross.
You might have been a headache but never were a bore
Then I got as high as a steeple,
But we were intelligent people,
No tears, no fuss,
Hooray for us.
And hooray for Trilogy on this trip down memory lane. It’s an album that works just fine on the laidback parameters that it sets for itself. Put it another way it does not buy into the often trotted out fiction that nothing ever existed anywhere before breakfast given the incredible ingenuity exhibited by Brand New Artist X who has just consigned everything ever done in eternity to dust. Close to the hollow ground jazz is built on the overgrown, sometimes neglected, graves of the imagination.
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