Artist: Tony Williams Trio
Title: Young at Heart
Genre: Jazz, Fusion, Hard Bop, Post-Bop
Label: Columbia Records | Sony Music Japan (SRGS 4516)
Release Date: 1997/1999
Quality: DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz
Source: ISO SACD
Duration: 01:09:13
Recorded at Sony Music Shinanomachi Studio in Tokyo, Japan on September 24 and 25, 1996.
OUNG AT HEART is Tony Williams’ final recording prior to his death in 1997. YOUNG AT HEART is a firm exclamation point on the career of master drummer Tony Williams. Recorded just a few months before his untimely death, this disc is a treasure that no one who has followed Williams’ development from 17-year-old Miles Davis band phenom to legendary composer and bandleader should be without. In a rare trio setting with longtime sidemen Mulgrew Miller (piano) and Ira Coleman (bass) Williams displays the powerful chops, beautiful finesse and relentless drive that defines his unmistakable style. The majority of this disc is made up of standards; an unusual turn for Williams, who had become such a highly respected composer in his later life. We are treated to a grand display, however, as the trio masterfully energizes classics like “On Green Dolphin Street,” “You And The Night And The Music” and Bobby Timmons’ “This Here.” Williams, using both brushes and sticks, is in top form as he gravitates from colorful support to thundering bombast to stimulating melodic invention. Of special note, the lighter tunes including “The Fool On The Hill,” “Body And Soul” and the title track exhibit a sensitive side of Williams drumming that was often overlooked.
This would be the drummer’s last recording, cut six months before he died. It shows Williams in a more conciliatory mood, sublimating his huge chops and bombastic style for subtler shadings and support for pianist Mulgrew Miller and bassist Ira Coleman, while lessening none of his indefatigable swing. This was also the last band Williams toured with, indicating he was committed to and comfortable with the acoustic piano-bass-drums format. It’s a setting he had never really fully exploited over his years of leadership, no doubt inspired by the Herbie Hancock-Ron Carter partnership within the Miles Davis quintet of the mid-’60s. On the six standards present, Miller shines like a million facet diamond, his ultra-bright ideas swimming happily in this cauldron of crackling rhythms. The pianist peculiarly reharmonizes — perhaps even shifts keys — on six bars of the first line of the ballad “Body and Soul” and hits the kicker, his composition “Promethean,” hard and strong, ripping off boppish melodic and harmonic phrases as if child’s play. Williams trades fours on “Promethean” and the bass-led feature for Coleman during “You and the Night and the Music”; he also busts out with his typical triplet and quadruplet fury for the solidly swinging, slightly reharmonized “On Green Dolphin Street.” The trio also recapitulates the previously larger-ensemble Williams original “Neptune” in a more pensive, poised, Aquarian mode than the caravan processional of the earlier recording. Miller’s extraordinary modal chord extrapolations at the end are stunningly beautiful. Although this might not be viewed by fans as typical of Tony Williams, it is a logical conclusion to a brilliant career in jazz, and holds up high the lofty improvisational values he kept close to his vest, but near to our hearts. Recommended. –Michael G. Nastos, AllMusic
The subject of today’s sermon is our dearly departed elder, Tony Williams. Brother Tony never lost his joy of swing, nor his belief that in helping others to reach their potential, he in turn would be lifted.
From the Miles Davis Quintet to Lifetime to the last Trio, this humble jazz soul went full circle-all the while waging a quiet revolution that has forever re-defined the drummer’s role in the jazz ensemble.
Young at Heart is that last whisper, my brethren. Inspired in the circle of longtime spars pianist Mulgrew Miller and Ira Coleman on bass, TW revisited/reinvented the classics of his youth, gaining in the process what the Zen Buddhists call satori. Whether seductively re-paving “Green Dolphin Street” or cymbal-spashing/snare-tom tomming the Beatles’ fluffy “Fool on the Hill” into an tempestuous latin waltz, Young At Heart is Tony Williams’ musical spirit miraculously made flesh in 11 superlative tracks. Hallelujah. –Tom Terrell, JazzTimes
Tracklist:
1 Promethean 4:07
2 Young At Heart 5:48
3 On Green Dolphin Street 8:53
4 Farewell To Dogma 5:52
5 How My Heart Sings 6:14
6 Fool On The Hill 6:21
7 Neptune: Fear Not 6:11
8 You And The Night And The Music 6:45
9 Body And Soul 6:39
10 This Here 7:33
11 Summer Me, Winter Me 4:50
Personnel:
Bass — Ira Coleman
Drums — Tony Williams
Piano — Mulgrew Miller
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