I was lucky enough to see Ahmad Jamal perform with his trio at London’s Southbank Centre sometime in the late 90’s. The gig was quite a revelation for me as I’d previously only heard his famous recordings from the late 1950’s and early 1960’s (Live at the Pershing, Live at the Blackhawk etc) and was expecting something similar. At the start of the gig Ahmad launched into an incredible solo piano introduction which combined virtuosic runs with modal vamps and some almost free passages – it was not what I was expecting! The rest of the gig continued in the same vein. I remember particularly the almost telepathic rapport between the three musicians and the way Ahmad would cue different sections of the arrangement sometimes using hand signals. Also remarkable was the huge dynamic range they encompassed, from the lightest possible pianissimo to the most strident fortissimo sections. The music seemed integrated and highly controlled, and yet at the same time somehow dangerous and exploratory. It also demonstrated that like most of the greatest players in jazz, Ahmad was not content to rest on his laurels and reproduce a sound which had been successful for him forty years previously but was always pushing at the boundaries of the music.

Ahmad Jamal was born Frederic Russell Jones on July 2^nd. 1930 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had formal lessons from the age of seven and by the age of fourteen was playing professionally. Jamal was always very proud of his Pittsburgh roots, particularly the fact that the city boasted a rich tradition of jazz pianists including Mary Lou Williams, Billy Strayhorn, Errol Garner and Earl Hines, and Jamal himself was influenced to some extent both by Garner’s orchestral style, and Hines’s playfulness.

After graduating from George Washington High School in 1948 Jamal began touring with George Hudson’s Orchestra. He also joined another touring group called the Four Strings and although the group disbanded, Ahmad revived the name in 1951 and, modifying it to The Three Strings, formed what would be his first commercially successful band with guitarist Ray Crawford on guitar and Eddie Calhoun (later Richard Davis and then Israel Crosby) on bass. Music impresario John Hammond saw the band perform at the Embers club in New York and signed them to Okeh Records for whom the band made their first recordings.

1. Autumn Leaves

Miles Davis ‘borrowed’ this arrangement for the ‘Something Else’ session he recorded with Cannonball Adderley in 1958 – even down to the orchestrated stabs which follow the head in Jamal’s version. Miles admits as much on the liner notes when he namechecks Ahmad and says, “I got the idea for this treatment of Autumn Leaves from listening to him”. Jamal sets up the riff on the piano which is then taken up by Israel Crosby while Ray Crawford plays a kind of conga pattern on the body of his guitar. Jamal then plays an embellished version of the tune, accompanied by gently jabbing chords. After the interlude, Ahmad plays an improvised chorus and ends by fading out on the vamp. Jamal’s playing includes many of the features that he would later develop into his unique sound. Delicate, cleanly articulated lines, often using the high register of the piano, arranged sections juxtaposed with sections of improvisation punctuated by rhythmic vamps

2. Green Dolphin Street

Ahmad’s first trio recording with drums, and another performance which proved influential on Miles Davis. who recorded a very similar arrangement the next year (1957). As well as finding influence in his arrangements, Miles was also impressed by Ahmad’s use of space, and his way of phrasing a tune. Here Ahmad plays a long solo alternating between single-note lines and block chord sections where the piano almost sounds like a big band horn section.

3. But Not for Me

Recorded at the Pershing Lounge in 1958 during the trio’s residency there, At the Pershing: But Not for Me was a huge commercial success for Ahmad. It topped America’s jazz charts for months and spent 107 weeks on Billboard’s album charts. Jamal’s version of ‘Poinciana’ from that album also became a hit single. The title track is a great demonstration of Ahmad’s mature style. Israel Crosby and Vernell Fournier set up a groove (with Fournier playing a similar conga pattern to Ray Crawford, but on kit) while Ahmad hints at the tune without ever really playing it, almost the way a painter might use light to suggest a scene or object without ever painting it directly. This approach encourages the listener to ‘fill in the gaps’ whilst also allowing space for the groove. Ahmad’s solo again highlights his orchestral approach, and the fact that such a conceptually sophisticated style could also be so accessible and successful is testament to Ahmad’s genius.

4. Darn That Dream

Recorded live at the Blackhawk Club in San Francisco in 1961. Jamal performed this same arrangement for a TV special at CBS studios in 1960, and it’s quite instructive to compare the two performances. Ahmad uses the same arranged sections in both versions but combines them in different ways, thus keeping the performance fresh and spontaneous sounding. Jamal plays the tune in the unusual key of Db and plays it as a bright swing instead of a ballad.

5. Extensions

Israel Crosby died in 1962 to be replaced by Jamil Nasser. The 1965 album Extensions brought a new level of abstraction into Jamal’s sound. The title track is based on ‘I Didn’t Know What Time It Was’ but has been thoroughly deconstructed. The piece begins with a series of piano cadences which introduce cadenzas by the bass and drums. An Afro-Cuban style vamp (with Jamal playing inside the piano), alternates with sections of furious swing. It’s compelling and completely original.

6. The Look of Love

This comes from the 1968 album Tranquility with Jamil Nasser on bass and Frank Grant on drums. Grant plays a kind of double-time funk groove while Nasser plays sustained pedal points. Ahmad’s playing draws on McCoy Tyner’s language of pentatonic scales and quartal voicings, but interprets it in his own unique way. The result is startlingly modern and even reminds me of some of the territory Esbjorn Svensson would later explore with his trio.

7. I Love Music

From the album ‘The Awakening’, again with Nasser and Grant. A pretty, cyclic progression which Ahmad subjects to a series of solo rhapsodic variations, with bass and drums joining about half-way through. A section of this track was famously sampled by hip-hop producer Pete Rock and formed the basis of Nas’s track “The World Is Yours”. In a way Ahmad’s music with its emphasis on tight grooves, and cyclic vamp sections is a perfect fit for hip-hop.

8. Manhattan Reflections

As the seventies progressed Ahmad began incorporating more originals into his sets. This performance from the Monterey Jazz Festival 1971 is typical of some of the modal tunes he wrote during this period. Ahmad introduces a funky line which is taken up by the bass while the piano plays a quartal riff over the top. This performance is notable as one of the first recordings Ahmad made using the Fender Rhodes, which he would sometimes incorporate into his recordings.

9. Prelude To A Kiss

Jamal continued to release a steady stream of albums during the eighties and nineties. This comes from a session in 1995 with Ephraim Wolfolk on bass and Arti Dixon on drums where Jamal pays tribute to the songs of Ellington, Strayhorn and Hoagy Carmichael. Strayhorn’s lush chords provide a perfect vehicle for Ahmad’s impressionistic interpretation. Jamal always cited Art Tatum as an influence, and on these later albums where his prodigious technique is more to the fore, the debt is obvious.

10. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

This is taken from Ahmad’s penultimate album Marseille released when he was 86 years old. Ahmad gives the old spiritual a funky treatment and in a nod to the man who so championed the young Jamal’s music, incorporates a quote from Miles Davis’s Jean Pierre. Ahmad Jamal deserves to be remembered as one of the all-time greats, who through his influence on Miles perhaps did more to influence the direction of jazz in the 1950’s than any other single musician.

The post 10 Tracks I Can’t Do Without: Ahmad Jamal first appeared on UK Jazz News.

I was lucky enough to meet George Shearing in 1993 when I was a student on the postgraduate jazz course at the Guildhall School of Music. The South Bank Show were producing a programme about George’s life and contacted the Guildhall to see whether they would be interested in hosting a televised masterclass with George teaching some of the piano students. Although the masterclass was a great experience, at the time I was deep into my Keith Jarrett phase and had only heard a few of George’s more commercial recordings. Somehow, I didn’t feel much of a connection with Shearing’s music, which I felt was a bit bland, commercial and perhaps even a little ‘cheesy’. However, my meeting with him inspired me to listen again to his music, and the more I listened, the more I realised there was much more to it than I first acknowledged. Alongside the smooth strings and lush woodwind sections there was subtlety and depth, not to mention a real jazz sensibility. 

George was born in Battersea, the youngest of nine children. Blind from birth he must have had a pretty tough working-class upbringing, with his father delivering coal and his mother cleaning trains for a living. His first formal piano lessons were at the Linden Lodge School for the Blind, and it seems George was something of a prodigy as he was offered various scholarships to continue his musical education. In true jazz style though, young George instead got a job playing piano for “25 bob a week” at The Masons Arms in Battersea (which still exists). He continued working in local bands including The Ambrose Octet and Claude Bampton’s Blind Orchestra, and around this time met and befriended Leonard Feather. By his own account, his playing at this point was very influenced by Teddy Wilson and Fats Waller. He first visited America in 1946 for a three-month holiday and decided to move there permanently in 1947. 

He arrived in America at the height of the bebop boom, and one of his first gigs was playing at the Hickory House in NYC with bassist Oscar Pettiford. He also played with clarinettist Buddy de Franco, and in 1949 put together his first quintet with Marjorie Hyams on vibes and Chuck Wayne on guitar. 

1. September in the Rain 

This is where it all really starts for George. This 1949 recording of the Harry Warren standard for MGM became his first big hit, selling over 900,000 copies. The head is played in the famous ‘Shearing Style’ with Marjorie and Chuck playing the melody an octave apart and George playing block chords behind them. It’s interesting that even at this early stage George was combining radio-friendly melodicism with full-blooded bebop. In the bridge during the head George plays a blistering passage of sustained 16th notes, and his extended solo shows he’s been listening to Powell and Parker, combining double time sections with bop vocabulary. During the second chorus he demonstrates the ‘locked hands’ style which he’d developed from Milt Buckner by way of Glen Miller, and plays some technically demanding double-time passages using this technique. For a big commercial hit, September in the Rain smuggles in some pretty uncompromising jazz. 

 2. Conception 

Widely regarded as one of the best original bebop tunes ever written, this piece also ranks with Giant Steps as one of the most challenging tunes to improvise on, both because of the speed of the harmonic rhythm and the tricky modulations. George first recorded it in 1949 with his quintet, and the band breeze through it, negotiating the corners with ease. There is a suggestion that Conception was actually written by Bud Powell, but no-one really takes this seriously. 

3. Lullaby of Birdland 

George’s best-known tune, written for Morris Levy, the owner of Birdland, as the theme music for a radio show broadcast from the club. Based on the standard Love Me or Leave Me, George first recorded it in 1952 with Joe Roland on vibes and Dick Garcia on guitar. Taken at a brisk pace, Shearing plays the head in unison with Roland and Garcia and then takes a beautiful melodic solo, again switching to block chords in the bridge. 

4. Cuban Fantasy 

In the mid 1950s there was a Mambo craze in New York with the dance becoming very popular in dancehalls. George began incorporating Cuban music into his repertoire and was at the forefront of blending the new Mambo style with jazz – continuing on from Dizzy Gillespie’s experiments with Afro-Cuban music in the late 1940s. In 1955 he had a new quintet featuring Toots Thielemans on guitar and Johnny Rae on vibes and recorded the album “The Shearing Spell”. The album contained two Mambo-influenced tracks, an arrangement of Out of This World and the Ray Bryant tune Cuban Fantasy which also features Armando Peraza on congas. The piece begins with a swung unison theme, followed by a piano break leading to a Mambo section where George solos using both block chords and unison lines. The block chord style works very well within the Mambo context, being quite similar to two-handed techniques used by a lot of Cuban players.  

 5. Darn That Dream 

By the sixties Shearing had become part of the jazz establishment, releasing a steady stream of commercially successful albums. He interspersed these with more jazz-focused releases, such as this 1961 meeting with The Montgomery Brothers from which this unusually upbeat version of Darn That Dream comes. George and Buddy play the head in unison while Wes plays a countermelody. After Monk’s bass solo the band play a unison ‘shout’ chorus which was often a feature of his quintet arrangements. 

6. What Is This Thing Called Love 

This track comes from the great 1962 album “Jazz Moments” which teamed George up with Ahmad Jamal’s rhythm section of Israel Crosby on bass and Vernel Fournier on drums. Over the A section Fournier plays a ‘Poinciana’ type groove in 7/4 which alternates with swing in the bridge. George takes a lightly swinging solo and during ‘fours’ with the drums plays a sort of inverted version of the ‘Hot House’ theme. It’s a pity he didn’t record more with this line-up. 

7. Love Is Just Around The Corner 

Originally from a live concert in Santa Monica in 1963 featuring a twenty-year-old Gary Burton on vibes and Fournier again on drums. The arrangement was first recorded on the “Shearing in Hi Fi” album of 1956 and it’s really great to hear the band stretch out, with everyone contributing inspired extended solos. Shearing again makes great use of backing riffs behind the solos, and ‘shout’ choruses to build the excitement. 

 8. Tricotism 

In 1973 Shearing joined the German record label MPS and recorded a couple of albums with a trio consisting of the Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Irish guitarist Louis Stewart. This track is from their first album together called “Windows”. The Oscar Pettiford tune is played in unison by the trio, before Stewart launches into a swinging solo followed by Pederson and Shearing, who sounds inspired in this company. 

9. Easy To Love 

Throughout his career George would occasionally release solo piano albums beginning with “The Shearing Piano” in 1957. A skilled classical player, George would often find musical connections between classical pieces and jazz standards and incorporate these into his performances. In 1985 he released the solo album “Grand Piano” on the Concord label and on this treatment of Easy to Love combines a Teddy Wilson lightness with a Bud Powell harmonic complexity to great effect. 

10. Moose The Mooche 

In 2004 George released what would be his last studio album. “Like Fine Wine” featured long-time collaborator Neil Swainson on bass and young Canadian guitarist Reg Schwager. On Parker’s Moose the Mooche George revisits his bebop roots. After a unison head, Schwager and Swainson solo, followed by a couple of choruses from George. Now in his 85^th year, George’s technique is maybe not quite as crisp, but the light touch and effortless melodicism are still very present.

The post 10 Tracks I Can’t Do Without: George Shearing first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Bill was Senior Lecturer in Harmony and Composition at Leeds College of Music from the early 1970’s until his retirement in 1995. At that time Leeds was one of the few colleges in the UK which offered a qualification in jazz, and Bill was an important figure in the education of a generation of UK jazz musicians. As well as being a respected classical composer Bill also had a deep knowledge of jazz, in particular the piano style of Bill Evans. He was also an inspirational teacher who believed in allowing students to make their own discoveries, and opposed narrow, prescriptive models of education. Former student and pianist Nick Tomalin shares his own memories and reflections on Bill, whilst also drawing on the memories and experiences of other former students and colleagues (*).

I still vividly recall my first Bill Kinghorn lecture. I had enrolled at Leeds College of Music in 1990 aged nineteen, at the urging of my piano teacher, having recently bailed out of a journalism course, and with no real idea of what to do with my life besides a growing interest in jazz. Bill, dressed in his customary suit and bow tie began his Functional Harmony course by drawing a large Middle C on the blackboard and encouraging us to think of this not as a musical note but as a planet, complete with rings. He then proceeded to construct a complex analogy drawing parallels between the force of gravity in the universe and the musical forces at work in the tonal system.

I don’t remember every detail of the lecture, but I do remember walking out feeling that my mind had been expanded in some mysterious way, and that the world in general (and music in particular) was more complex and extraordinary than I had ever imagined. Having spoken to other ex-students of Bill in researching this article I now realise that this experience was far from unique!

Bill was born in Newcastle-upon Tyne in 1935. His interest in music began relatively late when aged eleven he bought himself a small plastic flute and taught himself to play. Impressed by this, the music master at his school gave him a recorder on which he became a virtuoso performer and as a young teenager he took part in a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion given by the Newcastle Bach Choir. This was his first experience of the music of Bach, an experience he would never forget, and which prompted him take piano lessons.

In 1953 he began a teacher training course at St John’s College in York, where he became involved with the musical activities there, writing music for a production of King Lear and founding a recorder consort. In this year Bill even had an impromptu encounter with Benjamin Britten when the composer came up and complimented him on some music he had written for a performance at the York Festival.

He returned to Newcastle to take up a teaching post, and then in the mid-sixties moved to Yorkshire. In 1967 he became Head of Music at Foxwood School in Leeds where he first met lifelong friend and colleague Graham Hearn who remembers this time: “Bill was seriously into the work and philosophy of John Cage which chimed with my burgeoning sympathies with experimental music and together we began to apply Cage’s ideas in our teaching…” Soon after he joined the faculty of Leeds Music College as Lecturer in Harmony and Composition.

Bill was a prolific classical composer, and his catalogue of works includes three symphonies, a piano concerto, a violin concerto, two string quartets, two piano sonatas and various choral works. However, he also performed to a high level as a jazz pianist (though infrequently) and had a particular love of, and profound insight into the work of Bill Evans. The pianist Dave Milligan studied piano with Bill for two years and remembers working on a Chopin prelude with him: “Bill had an incredible way of analysing music and demonstrated these amazing connections between the Chopin and a transcription he had done of one of Evan’s recordings. It was like a mine of harmony, texture and tone control…”

A rare jazz performance by Bill was always a cause for excitement in the college, and I remember attending one in a packed recital room in the old Civic Theatre building. Bill was accompanied by Ronnie Bottomley on drums and Dick Hawdon on bass, and it was thrilling to hear how he translated his profound harmonic understanding and assimilation of Evan’s style into his own unique approach to jazz piano.

Bill was a truly inspirational teacher. He earned the affectionate nickname of ‘Yoda’ from many of his students, and there was something of the wise old master with an impish sense of humour to his persona. His teaching philosophy was unapologetically progressive, and he always encouraged students to think for themselves and to challenge received wisdom and dogma. Dave Milligan recalls: “He rarely ‘showed’ you how to do something. He would challenge you to figure it out; teaching you to teach yourself”. Saxophonist Tori Freestone makes a similar point: “He never spoon-fed but instead gave us concepts so that we could discover the beauty of the creative process ourselves.”

This could be quite challenging for students who merely wanted to be told ‘what to do’ and many found his teaching too abstract or esoteric. Bill was no dry academic though, his lectures were always full of jokes and fun, and he was also aware of the pitfalls of over-analysis and mistaking representation for reality. In fact, I remember he used to jokingly suggest that the root of the word ‘analysis’ might in fact be ‘anal’.

Many former students attest to Bill’s ability to communicate profound truths about music in an engaging way. Guitarist Jonathan Preiss says: “…what he was really teaching us was a deep appreciation of what gives music some of its intense beauty and meaning.”

Bill would sometimes rail against what he referred to as the ‘hot licks’ school of improvising, whereby a student would buy a book of jazz licks and string them together with no understanding of the melodic or harmonic context of the original phrases. Pianist Matthew Bourne another former student of Bill’s speaks of this aspect of his teaching “…there were no quick fixes, magic incantations or universal licks to help you progress. These ideas were anathema to him. Instead, Bill’s approach was concerned with uncovering the principles by which something worked, applying one’s own language to that, and then finding one’s own voice as a result of the hard work.”

Some of Bill’s classical pieces were performed during his lifetime (I remember attending a performance of his Concerto for Orchestra at Leeds Town Hall), but he remains largely unrecognised for his huge contribution to music and music education, perhaps because as Matthew Bourne puts it: “He was just so damn modest!” His influence as a teacher will live on, however, in the many musicians he inspired, and who through their own teaching practices have gone on to introduce Bill’s ideas to new generations of students. In my own teaching I often find myself quoting Bill or introducing an idea or concept that I later realise can be traced back to him..

Guitarist Jez Franks who was a student of Bill’s and eventually became a colleague, perhaps puts it best when he says that after an encounter with Bill “…you felt ever so slightly elated, ever so slightly augmented as a person, aware of an underlying fizz of inspiration and creativity and the desire to pass that feeling on to others”.

William Kinghorn F Leeds CM, FTCL, LTCL, ARCM. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne UK, 1935. Died Harrogate 28 April 2021

The post Bill Kinghorn (1935 – 2021). first appeared on UK Jazz News.