Thursday, August 5, 2010

Thinking About Art Farmer







Although this YouTube has been available in the past on the columnar or left-hand side of the blog, given the amount of work that went into its development, the JazzProfiles editorial staff wanted to post it as a feature.

The YouTube is a tribute to the late Jazz trumpet player Art Farmer, 1928-1999, and the music chosen for the soundtrack is Horace Silver's - The Outlaw - as performed by trumpeter Brian Lynch's quintet with Ralph Moore on tenor saxophone, Kirk Lightsey on piano, bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Victor Lewis.

This composition is vintage Horace with its twists and turns containing all sorts of surprises due to its unusual structure.  Like his tune Ecaroh, it employs both 4/4 straight-ahead and Latin-inflected rhythmic passages, but The Outlaw does so within an asymmetric construction that employs two sections of thirteen [13] bars divided into seven [7] measures of straight-ahead 4/4 and six [6] of Latin rhythms, a ten [10] bar 4/4 section which acts as a bridge followed by a sixteen [16] bar Latin vamp [or Latin pedal] with a two [2] bar break that leads into the next solo.

It’s a masterpiece whose seemingly disparate parts come together to generate a powerful “tension and release” effect that will leave you wanting to listen to this sprightly bit of musical magic over and over again.

The track can be found on Brian 's Peer Pressure Criss Cross CD [1029].  Criss Cross is a Dutch label whose owner, Gerry Teekens, used as the recording engineer for this date, Rudy van Gelder, who is best known for his work on many of the classic Blue Note LP's of the 1950's and 1960's.