Mal Waldron - Searching in Grenoble: The 1978 Solo Piano Concert (2022)

Posted By: gribovar

Mal Waldron - Searching in Grenoble: The 1978 Solo Piano Concert (2022)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+.cue+log) - 501 MB | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.93) - 243 MB | Covers - 27 MB
Genre: Jazz, Piano Jazz | RAR 3% Rec. | Label: Tompkins Square (TSQ 5906)

When Mal Waldron died in 2002, he was known to most jazz fans as Billie Holiday's final accompanist, and the composer of the standards "Soul Eyes," "Left Alone," and "Straight Ahead," the latter with Abbey Lincoln. His most significant leader date was 1961's The Quest, with Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin on Prestige, where he served as house pianist. After suffering a total breakdown following a near-fatal heroin overdose in 1963, he was forced to relearn the piano. He left for Europe in early 1966, and his "second life" began. Waldron's many solo recordings, beginning with 1966's All Alone, are tantamount to the creation of a different jazz language. Its traits were angular, quizzical repetitive left-hand vamps and chords, underscored and appended by inquisitive harmonic inquiries on the right, drawn chiefly from the blues but also the jazz tradition and classical music from Chopin to Schoenberg. Searching in Grenoble is a previously unissued 100-minute-plus performance from a jazz festival that has been transferred from the original Radio France archival tapes.
Waldron's canny, bountiful improvising is fully evident on the original 23-minute opening medley, "Mistral Breeze"/"Sieg Haile" (the latter a tribute to Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie). Its brooding chords, somber vamps, and repetitive, tightly wound left-hand figures establish the ground as the pianist investigates each one, shifting tempos and tonal centers before breaking into lyric asides in illustrating their dexterity. Though his approach is not associated with conventional "swing," there is plenty in his "Fire Waltz," with fat, chunky vamps creating a darker rhythmic sound contrasted with ascendant chords and cheerful runs with his left hand. "You Don't Know What Love Is" commences with almost doomy operatic chords, then transforms itself through the blues, ragtime, and Eastern modes as it reveals its deeply emotional center. "Soul Eyes" spotlights the effortless transitions Waldron makes between styles and harmonic and rhythmic tensions as he moves alternately in front of and behind the beat, seemingly stretching time to discover and excavate hidden harmonic nuances.
On disc two, Waldron delivers a nearly cinematic version of the standard "It Could Happen to You" that balances discovery and nuance after introducing a 12-bar blues walk. His nearly ten-minute reading of "I Thought About You" is a breathtaking exercise in resonant balladry wedding classical harmony and dissonant blues. His "Snake Out" is a biting, jumping modal blues with deft lower-register tonal investigations that strip down into knotty single-line ostinatos and arpeggios. Closer "All Alone," a dramatic ballad based in dirge and drone, becomes almost transcendent halfway through as its lyric heart is uncovered.
The accompanying booklet contains notes and interviews by co-producer Zev Feldman and daughter Mala Waldron, critical appreciations by Adam Shatz and Pascal Rozat, and interviews with Ran Blake and Matthew Shipp. Searching in Grenoble illustrates the maturity, depth, and detail in Waldron's musical language to full effect in excellent sound. Hopefully, its release leads to a wider, fully deserved conversation about his criminally under-noticed yet massive contribution to jazz.
CD 1 Tracklist:
01. Mistral Breeze/Sieg Haile
02. Here, There and Everywhere
03. Russian Melody
04. Petite Gemeaux
05. Fire Waltz
06. You Don't Know What Love Is
07. Soul Eyes

Total time: 01:05:33

CD 2 Tracklist:
01. It Could Happen to You
02. Russian Melody
03. I Thought About You
04. Snake Out
05. All Alone

Total time: 37:49

Exact Audio Copy V1.6 from 23. October 2020

EAC extraction logfile from 26. February 2023, 16:26

Mal Waldron / Searching In Grenoble: The 1978 Solo Piano Concert

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Exact Audio Copy V1.6 from 23. October 2020

EAC extraction logfile from 28. February 2023, 17:31

Mal Waldron / Searching In Grenoble: The 1978 Solo Piano Concert

Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 1

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%–tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%


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–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6

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==== Log checksum 7A9EF6E3869238C685CC052E366BE36D3C995E39BF41FA213D0280A284688C99 ====

[CUETools log; Date: 06.03.2023 10:35:24; Version: 2.1.4]
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Thanks to rudeboy

See also:
Mal Waldron Quintet - Mal-1 (1957) [Reissue 1991]
Mal Waldron - Mal/3 Sounds (1958) [Reissue 1992]
Mal Waldron - Update (1987)
Mal Mal Waldron, Richard Davis... Blanchard - Fire Waltz (1988)
Mal Waldron - Soul Eyes: The M...um [Recorded 1955-1962] (2003)