Bassist Ron Carter on Piano Jazz with Maria McPartland

Ron Carter first appeared on the national scene as a member of Miles Davis' second great quintet, which coalesced around the recording of Davis' album Seven Steps to Heaven. 

Carter has also worked with an unbelievable range of giants from inside and outside the world of jazz: from Coleman Hawkins, Chet Baker and Eric Dolphy to Aretha Franklin, Antonio Carlos Jobim and A Tribe Called Quest.

The session gets underway with a duet on "Blues in the Closet," written by bassist Oscar Pettiford. Carter holds down a steady bass line while Marian McPartland swings brightly through a solo; she then comps his bouncing solo with stabbing chords.

"His tunes are fun to play," McPartland says of Pettiford. "They've got a sort of cheerful vibe."

"It's a bass player writing for the instrument," Carter replies. "And anyone can play the tune and have a comfortable experience."

Carter and McPartland continue with a duet on "Stardust." Carter, who started out on cello in the Detroit public schools, brings a unique touch by leading the tune on bass as McPartland accompanies on the piano.

"It didn't sound rushed, and yet you played the whole verse and the whole chorus," McPartland says. "It sounded very romantic.

 

The session continues with a duet on another Oscar Pettiford tune, "Bohemia After Dark." McPartland follows with her solo rendition of Hoagy Carmichael's "New Orleans," which naturally leads in to another duet on the seminal New Orleans tune "Basin Street Blues."
"People put that tune in a certain category," McPartland says. "But it's nice the way you did that — you led me into doing things."
"One of the fun things about being a bass player is you can make those kinds of things happen," Carter says.
Next, McPartland plays another Piano Jazz signature — her solo musical portrait of the program's guest. The portrait she plays for Carter is both lyrical and playful, and evokes the understated beauty of the bass part in jazz.
"When one hears a musical portrait of oneself played so clearly and wonderfully as that you just played — it's a really humbling sound," Carter says. "Thank you very much."
They close with a duet on Miles Davis' iconic "So What," playing at a tempo somewhere between the steady original from the Kind of Blue sessions for Columbia and the breakneck pace of Davis' early-'60s quintet. 


McPartland sums up the tune and this session: "I bet Miles liked it."
Originally recorded June 20, 2006. Originally broadcast in 2007.

Set List

"Blues in the Closet" (Pettiford)

 "Stardust" (Carmichael, Parish)

"Bohemia After Dark" (Pettiford) 

 "New Orleans" (Carmichael) 

"Basin Street Blues" (Spenser) 

"Portrait of Ron Carter" (McPartland) 

"So What" (Davis)

Variations Triptyque Piano Chocalate ... à mes deux Sœurs Virtuoses Sonia & Soraya

Keith Jarrett by Henry Leutwyler & Bonus Tracks with Charlie Haden

Henry Leutwyler Photographer says:

"Keith Jarrett played a half hour private concert I photographed him in Pennsylvania 2010 I love my job."

After three decades without a collaboration, jazz legends Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden have teamed up for a new album called Jasmine. The piano-and-bass duo recorded Jasmine in Jarrett's studio in his New Jersey home — no bells, no whistles, just crystal-clear sound.

Haden and Jarrett seamlessly trade melodies back and forth in a sort of musical conversation, but Jarrett says it's much deeper than that.

"We're trying to find the dynamic — not exactly blend, but add the right color at the right moment based on what the other player is playing," he says.

On Jasmine, Jarrett plays an old, beat-up Steinway. He says that even though he has another piano to play, he always sits down at his practice instrument.

"I have a connection with it," he says. "It has its problems as far as evenness across the keyboard. It has some strange noises and inequities, but it's close to me."

During their recording sessions, Haden says, he heard the subtleties of the music in a way he'd never heard them before — the piano mallets striking the strings, and even his fingertips brushing upon his bass' strings.

"It's just incredible, the sounds that come out of the music, that are involved in the music," Haden says. "And it just shows you that it's really not about music. It's about the universe we're living in." Both Jarrett and Haden approach music similarly, with the same musical values, and that's why they say recording this album felt so natural. They channeled the standards in Jasmine, but also put a high premi
um on improvisation. "That's the thing about musicians," Haden says. "The priority is to create something new that's never been before. And you put your life on the line every time that you play."

Charlie Haden Site Link