Violin Jazz
COOK, BRUCE
On Music VIOLIN JAZZ by bruce cook Considering how long jazz has been around, it seems amazing that all the jazz violinists worth remembering can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But if the...
...He recorded with various rock-and-rollers in the next few years—notably Frank Zappa and Elton John?and for all of 1974 he was a member of John McLaughlin's Maha-vishnu Orchestra...
...It was the Quintet, of course, that gave shape to Grappelli's musical life...
...he experimented with different instrumentations and sounds, finally discovering the musical direction he wanted to follow...
...The Menuhin-Grappelli collaboration worked far better than anyone had a right to expect...
...A third album is now planned...
...Grappelli, who first won attention for himself in the '30s as a member of the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, has just completed a concert tour of America...
...His "Lover Man,' "My Funny Valentine" and two separate versions of "Body and Soul" are indeed beautiful to hear...
...The Quintet of the Hot Club of France, together only five years, recorded so much and so well that the impression left by the group and its two soloists may well last as long as jazz is heard...
...He still seems most comfortable with a loping bounce tempo that echoes the music of the Quintet of the Hot Club of France...
...He is nearly 70 years old, but on stage he was completely in command...
...And while there are certainly differences among the pieces that make up this set, all seem to share a certain unity of feeling...
...To fully appreciate not merely his origins but his development, therefore, you really must listen to his earlier recordings...
...Even the up-tempo numbers—and Grappelli's version of "The Lady is a Tramp" is very up indeed—are not in the least frenetic or forced...
...Intriguing as they are...
...The first, Upon the Wings of Music (Atlantic SD 18138), was made immediately after he left McLaughlin...
...For on such occasions he tends to be a bit too accomodating to his partner, to lose too much of his unique sound—as distinctive as Louis Armstrong's was on trumpet or Charlie Parker's on alto...
...Yet somehow it is all there in the music...
...Guitarist Dizley even had a few of Django Reinhardt's solos down note-for-note...
...In a sense, they do...
...Grappelli was on (our in England when the fighting broke out and stayed there for the duration...
...The Belgian Gypsy, who died in 1952, was a virtuoso guitarist and, in the chamber-jazz format he and Grappelli devised (three guitars, violin and bass), they achieved a brilliant and unmatched musical interplay...
...While it was not so crashingly loud as the Maha-vishnu Orchestra, a strong influence was still apparent—particularly in the rhythm, marked by frequent tempo changes and the use of the drummer as a "voice.' Ponty comes much closer to discovering a distinctive sound for himself and his group in the current Aurora (Atlantic SD 18163...
...He becomes somewhat excessive on "Ebbtide," however (what prompted him to choose this florid number...
...It is a quality he shares with classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who has recorded raga with Ravi Shankar?and jazz with Stephane Grappelli...
...It is reassuring to know that a jazz violin rests firmly in the capable, maturing hands of Jean-Luc Ponty...
...Of all the English musicians Grappelli encountered during the War, his favorite was George Shearing...
...The two still respect each other, although Ponty's musical direction has sharply diverged from the mainstream style of his mentor...
...The slow ballads on the album, all standards, give a strong sense of the violinist's lyrical side...
...Ponty and his colleagues have produced two albums...
...For the most part, Grappelli admirably resists this temptation...
...Nevertheless, he plays enthusiastically and stylishly and Grappelli, as always, is brilliant, light and exciting...
...Grappelli's recordings are not limited to traditional jazz: He has made them in practically every context from rock (with Pink Floyd) to modern jazz (with Gary Burton...
...His most outstanding quality, in fact, is an ability to adapt and contribute something to any musical company...
...As long as he is around—just as Stephane Grappelli and Joe Venuti have been for years—there will be someone to prove it can be done...
...his absence is always felt...
...J Jean-Luc Ponty, one of the few truly gifted violinists in the field of "jazz-rock," is also a Frenchman...
...The rhapsodic style and endless embellishments get a little out of hand here, and he dips dangerously close to the kitsch level of Helmut Zacharias...
...this great violinist simply cannot improvise...
...Although they got together a few times after the War, Grappelli and Django were on their own when the guitarist's death split them permanently...
...Grappelli played with the best musicians in England as well as with the Americans who passed through...
...Interestingly enough, he finds his way by re-emphasizing the jazz element he had subordinated almost completely to rock...
...And the Diz Dizley Trio, backing him up, made a conscious and reasonably successful effort to recreate the old sound of the Quintet...
...On the whole, Aurora is one of the most pleasantly listenable jazz-rock albums yet issued...
...It is jazz of a very distinctive sort: romantic and almost nostalgic in its associations with a place and a time—Paris in the '30s —most of us can only imagine...
...A soloist as inventive and fluent as Stephane Grappelli is always in danger of being carried away by himself, of becoming drunk on his own facility...
...The mood is uniformly relaxed...
...When at last they did, it was in front of a recording microphone...
...Grappelli's albums with Menuhin or Pink Floyd, or in other special contexts, do not offer the best introduction to his work...
...The albums that resulted were Jalousie and Fas-cinatin' Rhythm (on Angel...
...A graduate of the Paris Conservatory (as Stephane Grappelli certainly is not) and at one time a classical musician with the Concerts Lamoureux Orchestra, he became intrigued with the possibilities of jazz when he first heard Grappelli...
...Grappelli's rhapsodic and delicate style expresses so much of that era, of its feeling and sensibility...
...the music has become much less abstract and more melodic...
...In fact, listening to the two of them today, one might think they play different instruments...
...When I saw Grappelli in person recently, I found myself quite unprepared for the experience...
...That year seems to have been a critical one in Jean-Luc Ponty's career, just as the five years Grappelli spent with Reinhardt did much to determine his subsequent path...
...It suits Ponty's present musical orientation—jazz and rock with a pronounced electronic bias...
...He first toured America in 1969 with a straight jazz trio, but during his stay he received prolonged exposure to the music being made in and around the Miles Davis group...
...The violin tucked under his chin issued some of the prettiest, lightest, most cleanly imaginative jazz sounds I have ever heard...
...In 1975 he started his own group, began recording for Atlantic, and has been proceeding on an independent course ever since...
...Many are still available, and you will find they are a treat to hear...
...But if the violin is hard to master, it is even more difficult to play with the sort of freedom and flexibility fluent improvisation demands...
...Ponty listened to the "jazz-rock fusion" and liked what he heard...
...The two were reunited not long ago at a recording session, and the album they made is soon to be released on Capitol...
...For the past few years Jean-Luc Ponty has been using an electrically amplified violin, something Grappelli tried and rejected years ago...
...A musician who ought to know once remarked to me that playing jazz on the violin is like swinging in a lead jacket...
...Ponty may even have found his Django in the musically overwhelming McLaughlin...
...though...
...All of Menuhin's solos and ensemble passages were written out for him...
...It was recorded at a single session in Paris with European musicians, except for Kenny Clarke, the great expatriate American drummer, who makes his presence felt throughout...
...In person and on vinyl he generally confines himself to medium beats that swing delightfully...
...That being the case, Stephane Grappelli's brilliance on the instrument is especially remarkable...
...The breakup did him a world of good musically, since it forced his independence from Rein-hardt, in whose shadow he had been laboring...
...The two violinists, brought together more or less by chance, had admired one another for years but had never been bold enough to attempt a duet...
...A better starting point might be the excellent new two-record set Satin Doll (Vanguard VSD 81/82), where Grappelli is at his most characteristic and comfortable...
...It served to reestablish his reputation in this country and to remind anyone who had forgotten that among jazz violinists, this French giant is equalled only by the great Joe Venuti...
...The whole effort creates the impression of quick, witty conversation?table talk in Paris...
...Reinhardt's memory lurks over every Grappelli performance...
...World War II separated the violinist and the guitarist...
...The mode is lyrical...
Vol. 59 • June 1976 • No. 13
