Friday, July 16, 2010

Milestone/Galaxy: Original Jazz Classics Sampler (2003)

(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )

Milestone/Galaxy: Original Jazz Classics Sampler
(Milestone/Galaxy)


A less haphazard ransacking of an important jazz label’s catalogue you won’t easily find. Although tracks three through sixteen don’t command attention like tracks one and two (about which more in a second), many of them make themselves felt before fading into the background. As for tracks one and two, they’re enough to turn dabblers into obsessives, what with McCoy Tyner’s 1973 swirling “Song of the New World” apparently conceived to convince progressive-rock fans that they’ve been barking up the wrong tree (and that it’s not too late to learn new tricks) and Lee Konitz’s “Duplicity,” a freely exploratory minimalist duet from 1967 with the violinist Ray Nance apparently conceived to encourage the self-consciously avant-garde to put their John Cage records away. Rating: Three-and-a-half summers of love out of five.

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