I don’t know what to say apart from I love this. But details dear boy apart from filing under W for Wonderful: OK it’s a studio album featuring a US based piano trio recorded in a day last year in a Brooklyn studio.
Against my better instincts in my own mind I always find it hard distinguishing what Elmo Hope did and what Bud Powell did. That maybe is heretical and of course Powell is the major figure I suppose because of his importance in the birth of bebop socially and because his compositions have been covered more extensively. However, the more you encounter Hope’s work and here it is interpreted so impressively and lovingly by pianist Jacob Sacks, bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza the more you think again and recognise the differences.
‘Tranquility’ I liked above all. Criss cross between the way Hope did it and the way this trio does it. There’s attention to detail and the spirit is there.
The tracks to me make me think of a lost time that sometimes gets recreated in small jazz clubs when musicians play bebop from the 1940s and 50s. It’s a very romantic scuzzily cellar bar type jazz that got captured very well in the Bertrand Tavernier film Round Midnight which drew on the lives of both Bud Powell and Lester Young for inspiration.
Elmo Hope was an innovative jazz pianist and composer whose career was tragically cut short by drug addiction, leaving him overshadowed by his more famous peers, Powell and Thelonious Monk. Despite his relative obscurity, he is highly regarded by musicians for his unique and harmonically complex compositions. Born St. Elmo Sylvester Hope on 27 June 1923, in New York City, he studied classical piano from a young age and showed early promise, winning competitions as a teenager.
He grew up alongside fellow piano prodigy Powell and became close friends with Monk, with the three spending hours playing together and influencing each other’s style. In the 1940s, he gained experience playing in rhythm and blues bands, including a three-year stint with trumpeter Joe Morris’ band.
In the mid-1950s, Hope began recording as a leader for prominent labels like Blue Note and Prestige. He also appeared as a sideman, using the term of the time, on landmark hard bop sessions with future jazz giants, including Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Clifford Brown, and Jackie McLean.
His playing was distinct for its subtle, intricate approach, prioritising complex harmonic ideas and melodic variation over pure speed.
Hope’s career was derailed by his long-term heroin addiction. Around 1956, a drug conviction led to the revocation of his New York City “cabaret card,” which effectively banned him from playing in the city’s jazz clubs. Unable to work in New York, he relocated to Los Angeles in 1957.
While there, he found some work with musicians like Harold Land, and met and married pianist Bertha Rosemond. After returning to New York in 1961, his drug and health issues worsened, and he served another short prison sentence. His final recordings were made in 1966. He died shortly after of heart failure following a hospital stay for pneumonia, at the age of 43.
Decades after his death, Hope’s reputation has steadily grown and this recording is another great moment in this posthumous profile raising journey, with many critics and musicians recognising him as an unsung genius. His widow, Bertha Hope, has dedicated her career to transcribing and keeping her late husband’s compositions alive through performance. In 2016, his childhood street in the Bronx was officially renamed “Elmo Hope Way – Jazz Pioneer” in his honour.
RECENT ARTICLES
- Shalosh, What We Are Made Of, ACT ***
- The Bad Plus, Chris Potter, Craig Taborn, Barbican, City of London ****
- Alexander Claffy, Alive in Philadelphia, Vol. 1 (At Chris’ Jazz Cafe), Cellar Music ****
- Paul Carrack, For One Night Only – Live in London, Carrack UK ***1/2
- Steve White trio, Soul Drums: The Jazz Sessions Vol. 1, Acid Jazz ****
