Description

1LP Vinyl – Tone Poet Mono 180g edition

This Tone Poet release, pianist Andrew Hill’s 1964 Blue Note debut Black Fire, is a perfect example of everything this series gets astoundingly right. The catalog selection highlights an important artist who helped the label extend into the avant-garde it had so far shied away in the first few years of the decade. 

Hill, a Chicago native born to Haitian parents, brings an experimental and impressionistic flavor to the hard bop underpinnings of his seven original tunes.  Sharing the studio with blue note veteran, saxophonist Joe Henderson, he takes the group through a palate of interesting colors and changes. Half blues and half Debussy, he brilliantly displays his cosmopolitan musical upbringing while retaining his own unique voice as a composer and soloist. Perhaps the highlight of this well-paced album for me was the penultimate track McNeil Island, in which Hill demonstrates his poetic musical painting that almost reminds the listener of Thelonious Monk. Taking cues from their leader, we are then treated to a sublime duet between Henderson and bassist Richard Davis forming a kind of mellow counterpoint, with Davis utilizing a classical bow on his upright bass. This gives way immediately to the introduction of the final track Land of Nod in which drummer Roy Haynes hammers out a blisteringly lively groove.

Throughout all of this, the listener is rewarded with a rich and engaging audio experience courtesy of mastering guru Kevin Gray (whose work every audiophile should be well acquainted). The soundstage has all the hallmarks of a traditional Rudy Van Gelder recording, with many of the instruments distinctly placed in specific corners of the stage. The drums for instance are always firmly off to the right, with Hill and Davis placed neatly in the center. This is not to imply the staging yields flat left-right pans, but rather the listener gets the impression that they are very close to the stage in a small jazz club. Tone and phrasing are also rendered convincingly in this pressing, something AAA pressings tend to excel at.  The drums always have a realistic attack and decay that isn’t always captured in digital counterparts. Likewise, Joe Henderson’s phrasing carries with it a direction and breathiness that lets the listener know they are hearing a true representation of the master tape.