COVID-19 Lockdown: Day 26

There was a little Sal listening over the weekend. Friday night, the duo tracks from Lee Konitz’ 1971 album Spirits had a spin and on Sunday night Jimmy Halperin’s Pslam had a run too. This morning I returned to Ruckus: Live at CJC (Creative Jazz Club Aotearoa) and my mood was such that I could focus in more that last week. I hadn’t heard any of DavidWard’s music in a long time and I really enjoyed re-connecting with it. He brings a slight quirky, fun approach to his music which went down well during the early start on Monday morning. Dave never was one for playing millions of notes, and this still seems to be the case. Not afraid of letting lines breathe is something that I’m aware of but that doesn’t mean it always happens! Nice band too – anything with John Bell (vibes) and Chris O’Connor (drums) is going to interest me. Rui Inaba (bass) was new to me and he slots in well. Nice sounding live recording too.

Following that, I wrapped up Sal Mosca’s Too Marvelous for Words with disc 5, containing the remainder of the Rotterdam concert and the Maastricht concert June 24 1981. In addition to some lines by Sal and Lennie Tristano, unsurprisingly, the repertoire across the five discs is drawn from the great American songbook (“Donna Lee” and “Hot House” get a couple of runs each too). He doesn’t really favour a particular tune “A Family Song” and “You Go To My Head” appear three times each, and plenty appear twice, but the set list stays pretty fresh concert to concert. Do I have a favourite concert? Well, I need to spent more time with the recordings and eventually one may stick with me a bit more than the others. Over the past several years I’ve moved away from playing standards. I still enjoying listening to them though and there’s no guarantee I won’t return to them at some stage. This set of discs serves as a lovely reminder of how much music can be extracted from these gems (and just how great Sal was).