Herbie Nichols - 101 not out: Forthcoming Release...

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

"Today, January 3, 2020, on Herbie's 101st birthday, we're announcing that as soon as possible we will be releasing, not just the above two recordings and lead sheets, but 24 previously unrecorded Herbie Nichols compositions recorded by 23 different great pianists (encompassing eight generations!) in our special Herbie Nichols Solo Piano Summit project. All were recorded at the Rudy Van Gelder Studio on the same famous Steinway B piano that Herbie and so many famous jazz pianists (Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and many others) recorded on. As a producer, it was a great honor for me to work with these 23 pianists, who, in turn, all said they were honored to get to pay tribute to this great pianist/composer Herbie Nichols. I'm anxious for everyone to get to hear these new, previously unrecorded Herbie Nichols compositions. Look for more announcements about the specifics of the project from jazzleadsheets.com."

Copied from the Organissimo US web site this week.

BN.

[elmo]

This sounds like a very interesting project, Frank Kimborough did a similar very successful box set of all the known Monk compositions and I feel opened up new approaches to Monk's wonderful compositions.
I will definitely be buying the Herbie Nichols when its released.

elmo

[Ian Thumwood]

Shame that there is no other artist other than Frank Kimbrough named on this set . I agree that he is a great pianist and was previously involved with Ben Allison in the "Herbie Nichols Project " back in the late 1990s/ early 2000s.

I have the Roswell Rudd book at home which has a number of the lead sheets for the unrecorded material but the sad fact is that the bulk of his work is still unrecorded by anyone. From recollection, I believe some material had to be rescued from a flood in his apartment.

[Ian Thumwood]

I have been listening to Nichols "Love, gloom, cash , love" throughout this week. The liner notes are quite insightful as I had not realised just how far his musical career when back, He started playing for a big band in 1937 and the name check of musicians he worked with even included Tommy Benford who played drums for Jelly Roll Morton!

The Bethlehem LP is not as good as the Blue Note recordings which are probably more radical and are performed on a better instrument. There are a few things about the disc which are quite interesting. The first is that it includes more standards, You start appreciating some of the traits in his music such as the use of A-A-B-A1 form where the last eight differs slightly from the first two "A;s." The tunes always take weird harmonic twists which sound incorrect at first listen and take a while for your ears to become attuned to. I can understand why some listeners in the 1950s might have been disturbed by this tendency. The other trait is the number of tunes written in 3/4. This is largely absent from the Blue Note material although the Roswell Rudd collection of Nichol's compositions includes a good number of tunes written in that signature. If you like, the Bethlehem disc is quite typical of the range of Nichol's writing whereas I think Lions was looking for something a bit more "hardcore" for the Blue Note material. I would also have to say just how integral the drums are to Nichol's writing - not all of his compositions would work for solo piano because he was writing from a perspective of the drums and piano interacting.