MusicWeb International

Webmaster: Len Mullenger

[ Jazz index ] [Nostalgia index]  [ Classical MusicWeb ] [ Gerard Hoffnung ]

BUY NOW AmazonUK   AmazonUS

CHARLIE HADEN and GONZALO RUBALCABA Tokyo Blues IMPULSE 472 992-6

En La Orilla Del Mundo

My Love and I

When Will The Blues Leave

Sandino

Solamente Una Vez

Transparence

Charlie Haden (bass) and Gonzalo Rubalcaba (piano)

Recorded live at Blue Note Tokyo, Japan on March 16th to March 19th, 2005 [51:49]

I’m working from a promotional copy, without liner notes, so can’t tell to what extent documentation focuses, if at all, on the musical alliance of Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and the late Charlie Haden, but that is what is celebrated in this 52-minute disc on Impulse. The six tracks were made in Tokyo over a several-night residence in March 2005.

The recording at the Blue Note club in Tokyo is extremely fine – deep, rich, resonantly burnished, capturing the full range of the pianist’s fine playing as well as the to-to-bottom registral playing of the master bassist’s. In that aural context one can enjoy the ardently melancholic En La Orilla Del Mundo, where the pianist’s increasing decorative playing tends almost – but not quite – to the florid, always underpinned by Haden’s powerfully supportive figures. The deft allusive lines of My Love and I, with a rich romantic burnish, amplify the rather horizontal pleasures of an album that is long on glow if rather less purposeful when it comes to athleticism. And yet, of course, the album’s title is Tokyo Adagio, not Tokyo Allegro, so one should expect as much. Haden’s long solo on Ornette Coleman’s When Will The Blues Leave is a particular high point on the album though his own, rather more up-tempo Sandino – which elicits admiring applause - shows his own compositional skills and variety. In the main, though, this is late-night music, exemplified by Solamente Una Vez, the reverie intensified by the pianist’s rich, classical chording.

A disc such as this reveals Haden and Rubalcaba’s relaxed, romanticist credentials to an almost glutinous degree. Moments of up-tempo or more invasive playing offer some necessary contrast, indeed relief. Much here is truly beautiful, but you can have too much of a good thing.

Jonathan Woolf

Error processing SSI file

Return to Index