Heres a great review of my CD Tribute from the March issue of Jazz Inside. Im very pleased to report it has also been doing well on the JazzWeek chart. Thank you again to Kenny Barron, Rufus Reid, Carl Allen, and Mark Sherman. What an honor and a privilege it is to play this music. Some new gig info to follow! By Alex Henderson Some reviewers have argued that there are too many tribute albums being recorded by jazz musicians. But truth be told, tribute albums can be a major positive if the artist makes an effort to do something interesting and offer some sur- prises. If a run-of-the-mill saxophonist, for ex- ample, tries to emulate Charlie Parker’s style of playing and records a Bird tribute album that sticks to his most famous standards, the results might be totally forgettable. On the other hand, tribute albums that aren’t afraid to surprise us can be keepers. And tenor/soprano saxophonist Tim Hegarty offers some enjoyable surprises on Tribute, which he produced with vibist Mark Sherman. Tribute is not a tribute album in the usual sense where the artist focuses exclusively on one particular musician or composer. The big-toned Hegarty doesn’t pick Thelonious Monk or Irving Berlin, for example, and play nothing but Monk or Berlin compositions. Rather, the idea behind Tribute is Hegarty paying tribute to his teach- ers—that is, jazz greats he learned from along the way. Some of the people Hegarty counts among his teachers are famous jazz musicians he actually studied with, including George Cole- man, Frank Foster, Jimmy Heath and Frank Wess. But he also defines a teacher as someone he learned a lot by listening to even if he didn’t actually study with that person or know him/her personally. On the tenor sax, Hegarty favors a big, attractive tone that was directly or indirectly influenced by Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane, among others (the fact that there are elements of both Gordon and Coltrane in Hegarty’s sound makes perfect sense in light of the fact that Gordon was one of Coltrane’s early influences and Coltrane, in turn, ended up influencing Gordon in the 1960s). The tenor sax is Hegarty’s main instrument on Trib- ute, but he is also pleasing when he switches to the soprano on his pensive original “Not to Worry”—and whether he is on tenor or soprano, he enjoys rock-solid accompaniment. The musi- cians who join Hegarty on this post-bop release are Mark Sherman on vibes, Kenny Barron on acoustic piano, Rufus Reid on upright bass and Carl Allen on drums. Tenor saxophonist Heath has been an im- portant figure in Hegarty’s life. In the liner notes that he wrote for Tribute, Hegarty explains that he learned a great deal about jazz when he stud- ied with that Philadelphia native (who was part of the legendary Heath Brothers and is now 87). And of all the composers he salutes on this al- bum, Heath is the one he salutes the most. Hegarty performs no less than four Heath songs on this 10-song CD: “Ineffable,” “A New Blue,” “New Picture” and “Gingerbread Boy” (which is the best known of the four). So in other words, about 40% of the album pays homage to Heath’s legacy. But Hegarty acknowledges other great saxophonists as well, performing Henderson’s “Inner Urge” and Foster’s “Simone” as well as Coleman’s infectious “Amsterdam After Dark” (which, as its name indicates, has a very dusky, nocturnal sound). “Amsterdam After Dark,” which Coleman recorded for Timeless Records in the Netherlands back in the late 1970s, is not an obscure song but hasn’t been recorded by enough artists to be considered a standard. Nonetheless, the piece has a great mel- ody, and Hegarty’s decision to include it on this album was a wise one. Most of the musicians Hegarty celebrates on Tribute are saxophonists. The exception is pianist Thelonious Monk, who he acknowledges with a poignant performance of Monk’s “Pannonica” (which Monk wrote for the Baron- ess Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a major sup- porter of bop in the 1940s and 1950s). In order to appreciate where you are and where you are going, it is important to study history and learn from it. That is not to say that there needs to be slavish, knee-jerk emulation of the jazz greats, only acknowledgement of their achievements. And on the engaging Tribute, it is evident that the musicians Hegarty counts among his teachers—either literally or in a figurative sense—taught him well.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 21:24:39 +0000
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