Sir Roland Hanna’s Tributaries
is a beautiful, unassuming, and unpretentious CD. It’s
the sound of a man who gave his entire life to creating
music doing what he loves best. Hanna sits at the piano,
playing, and, through the miracle of modern recording technology,
the listener is at his side. Hanna pays tribute to some
of the finest jazz composers and performers around during
his lifetime, starting with fellow Detroit native Tommy
Flanagan. Tributaries is subtitled Reflections on Tommy
Flanagan, and Hanna ‘s debt to Flanagan’s playing
is on display here. Both pianists are grounded in modern
bop and post-bop harmonic structures, and both have a divine
gift for lyricism that gives their improvisation a depth
and flexibility that neither Pilc nor Sample match on their
respective solo discs. Hanna was at his best as a solo artist,
as his string of excellent solo piano recordings makes apparent.
Hanna’s set list here includes two
Flanagan compositions (“Sea Changes” and “Delarna”),
a couple of tunes by one of his old employers, Thad Jones
(“’Tis” and “A Child Is Born”),
a handful of material from the Great American Songbook
(“Body and Soul,” “Soon,” “Never
Let Me Go,” and “I Concentrate on You”),
and a couple of modern jazz compositions (“Things
Ain’t What They Used to Be,” Tom McIntosh’s
“The Cup Bearers,” and the Illinois Jacquet
vehicle “Robin’s Nest”).
Considering his interest in melody, Hanna
plays through large parts of his interpretations of these
tunes without explicitly stating the theme. Both “Body
and Soul” and “Things Ain’t What They
Used to Be” go through most of their running time
before their famous themes come bursting to the fore.
In addition, Hanna, a classically trained pianist, can
deconstruct a tune every bit as skillfully as Pilc, and
generally he can do it without calling attention to the
fact that he’s doing it. Hanna is clearly influenced
by Errol Garner and, of course, Art Tatum, without whom
modern solo piano would scarcely exist.
Hanna also stretches out more on many of
his performances, adding to the impression of the Sample
and Pilc CDs as a series of showcase performances. His
performances of “The Cup Bearers” and “Never
Let Me Go” are both over seven minutes in length
but don’t even break a sweat commanding the listener’s
attention for that length of time. Ultimately, Hanna and
Pilc are the more similar players from this group of three,
both capable of taking their source material to places
the listener could, in all likelihood, not have imagined.
Probably no pianist to arrive on the scene
from 1960 on has had as great an influence on jazz piano
(remember that Bill Evans emerged in the late ‘50s)
as Herbie Hancock. Hancock’s impressionistic yet bop-tempered
style has been the most imitated piano voice of the last
forty years save perhaps for Evans. So it is hard to conceive
of the fact that The Piano, the pianist’s
first foray into recorded solo piano work, has never been
released in the U.S. until now. Recorded in Japan in 1978,
the album (one of the first Direct-To-Disc recordings) was
only available in that country. That’s a time when
Hancock was written off by some jazz enthusiasts as having
delved much too deeply into the world of fusion. But Herbie
has never disavowed any aspect of his career, and continues
to explore both acoustic piano in various types of groups
and more modern styles that allow him to continue to experiment
with electronic instrumentation.
On The Piano, Hancock presents two
suites (originally each was one side of the vinyl recording).
The first is a trio of standards that not only have been
widely recorded by pianists, but that have been highly associated
with Hancock’s old employer, Miles Davis. “My
Funny Valentine,” “On Green Dolphin Street,”
and “Someday My Prince Will Come” were all recorded
by Davis, as well as by many other performers. Indeed, Davis’
renditions of “Valentine” and “Prince”
are often seen as definitive interpretations of these tunes.
Hancock explores the tunes and the relationships between
them with confidence and a great deal of lyricism. The fact
that these are somewhat orthodox solo performances of these
tunes, well within both Hancock’s general style and
the jazz tradition as a whole, has led some to surmise that
the pianist ‘played it safe’ when recording
this LP because of the expensive Direct-to-Disc format that
was used. There may be some truth to this, but in reality
the tunes all sound like fully-realized Hancock interpretations,
with little or not tentativeness about them. In addition,
the audience for this recording must be taken into account.
It was meant to appeal to Japanese jazz fans, and is therefore
probably keyed somewhat to the interests of that group of
listeners.
The second grouping of tunes consists of
four Hancock originals, all of which allow him to fully
demonstrate his overall acoustic style. “Harvest
Time” is a beautiful piece co-written by Hancock
and his younger sister. It’s a piece that should
be part of the standard jazz piano repertoire, and which
takes its cues from the delicate beauty of Bill Evans’
solo recordings. “Sonrisa” and “Manhattan
Island” are both elegant tunes performed with great
élan. “Blue Otani” is a nice, straight
ahead shot of blues that allows Hancock to explore both
his own take on the blues form as well as some stride
influence as well. Following these are several additional
performances of these tunes which must not have jelled
into the suites that Hancock was constructing. The entire
first side of the album is available in alternate takes,
as a matter of fact, though not in sequence—on my
copy track 10 (which follows the alternate takes of “Valentine”
and “Green Dolphin”) is labeled as “Someday
My Prince Will Come” but it is actually an alternate
take of “Harvest Time” that is every bit as
beautiful as the original, though quite different. In
fact, the alternate performances here should quell any
notion that Hancock had worked these arrangements to death,
as they contain much different introductions and reworking
of the thematic material.
It should also be remembered that Hancock
is working here without tape, and therefore without editing
or resequencing. That doesn’t enter into our judgment
of the music, perhaps, but it is worth remembering that
many performers would find it difficult to perform fifteen
or so straight minutes of material without obvious errors
or any kind of editing. Overall The Piano may be
something of a footnote in Herbie Hancock’s discography,
but it is well worth having for Hancock fans as well as
those who enjoy hearing a legendary artist kick back and
enjoy playing some of his favorite tunes, without feeling
the need to break new ground.
