ALL RISE: A Joyful Elegy For Fats Waller Jason Moran feat. Meshell Ndegeocello

• 1 Put Your Hands On It 00:20
• 2 Ain't Misbehavin' 03:43
• 3 Yacht Club Swing 04:05
• 4 Lulu's Back In Town 02:37
• 5 Two Sleepy People 04:07
• 6 The Joint Is Jumpin’ 05:10
• 7 Honeysuckle Rose 03:47
• 8 Ain't Nobody's Business 04:20
• 9 Fats Elegy 01:44
• 10 Handful Of Keys 02:54
• 11 Jitterbug Waltz 06:12
• 12 Sheik Of Araby / I Found A New Baby 05:00
• Total Runtime 43:59

Info zu ALL RISE: A Joyful Elegy For Fats Waller

All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller, a collaboration with the vocalist Meshell Ndegeocello that recasts the music of the legendary jazz entertainer Fats Waller as a modern dance party. The album—which was produced by Ndegeocello and Blue Note Records president Don Was—is the ninth in a formidable catalog that Moran has been building on Blue Note since 1999.

“Fats Waller is a special kind of provocateur,” says Moran. “It stems mainly from the fact that he was a singer as well as a pianist. Sometimes he was like an MC. It has always amazed me that a pianist whose playing was so deep could sing and keep a running commentary of what was going on around him all at the same time.”

All Rise features Moran hosting a changeable cast of musicians that includes vocalists Ndegeocello and Lisa E. Harris, his longtime trio The Bandwagon featuring bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, and a funky horn-inflected ensemble anchored by drummer Charles Haynes that features trumpeter Leron Thomas and trombonist Josh Roseman, as well as guest saxophonist Steve Lehman. The album was recorded and mixed by Bob Power, known for honing the sound on classic hip hop records by A Tribe Called Quest, Common and The Roots.

All Rise is the studio culmination of a project that was born onstage in Harlem as the Fats Waller Dance Party. In 2011—nearly a year after Moran had been named a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur “genius” fellow and around the time he was named Artistic Advisor for Jazz at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC—the NYC performing arts venue Harlem Stage Gatehouse commissioned Moran, a longtime resident of Upper Manhattan, to create a tribute to the Harlem stride master as part of its “Harlem Jazz Shrines” series.

'My wife Alicia had the idea that it should be a dance party, and I decided to jump at the task,' says the Houston, Texas-reared pianist. “If you think about Fats, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines—all of them were making the popular sounds of their era: dance music. Unlike today, where jazz audiences generally remain seated, dancing was expected when Fats showed up to a gig.”

“The objective was to construct an evening-length performance in a space that lent itself to dancing,” explains Moran. “I asked myself what could be the extra layer, or the extra couple of layers, we might add to Fats' music to provide a number of different ways for audiences to enjoy it? That's when I reached out to Meshell. I wanted someone who could not only sing Fats' lyrics, but be free with them, and also a musician more accustomed than I am to dealing with a crowd that's on its feet. She was my only choice.”

From the propulsive afrobeat groove of “Yacht Club Swing” to the simmering slow jam reinvention of “Ain’t Nobody’s Business,” Moran and Ndegeocello radically recast Waller’s repertoire for our times.In concert Moran also adds a layer of performance art by donning a larger-than-life papier-mâché mask of Waller’s head created for him by the Haitian artist Didier Civil.

The same spirit of radical reinvention can be found on Ndegeocello’s 2012 dedication to Nina Simone, Pour une âme souveraine, and her presence on All Rise guaranteed that the album would be infused with the contemporary kineticism of R&B and hip-hop. “I suggested the drummer, Charles Haynes,” Ndegeocello remembers, “because he has facility and his pocket is one you cannot hear and stand still. The dance aspect of what Jason proposed really excited me.”

Jason Moran, piano, Fender Rhodes piano, Wurlitzer organ
Meshell Ndegeocello, vocals
Leron Thomas, vocals, trumpet
Charles Haynes, vocals, drums
Lisa Harris, vocals
Stephen Lehman, saxophone
Josh Roseman, trombone
Nasheet Waits, drums

Recorded at Brooklyn Recording, Brooklyn, NY.
Engineered by Rick Kwan, Bob Power
Produced by Don Was, Me'Shell NdegeOcello

Jason Moran
is a pianist, composer, and bandleader who mines a variety of musical styles to create adventurous, genre-crossing jazz performances. Moran’s signature corpus marries established classical, blues, and jazz techniques with the musical influences of his generation, including funk, hip-hop, and rock. On his solo piano album, Modernistic (2002), he explores the evolution of twentieth-century rhythmic techniques through his virtuosic execution of two-handed “stride” piano—a style used extensively by jazz artists in the 1920s—while Same Mother (2005) is a re-examination of the emotional and stylistic elements of the blues tradition. In original compositions for his ensemble, The Bandwagon, Moran uses the human voice as a starting point for melodic structure, translating speech patterns into a musical language through which the listener can reflect on the underlying connections between speech and music. More recently, Moran has collaborated with visual and performing artists and incorporated new technology in imaginative multimedia performances. His 2008 homage to Thelonious Monk, In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall, 1959, weaves together crafted and found audio and visual archival material and a reharmonization of the original big band arrangements, illustrating both Monk’s contribution to the history of jazz as well as the enduring power of the musical form. Through reinterpretation of jazz standards and new compositions of his own, Moran is expanding the boundaries of jazz expression and playing a dynamic role in its evolution in the twenty-first century.

Jason Moran received a B.M. (1997) from the Manhattan School of Music. His additional recordings as a leader include Soundtrack to Human Motion (1999), The Bandwagon: Live at the Village Vanguard (2003), Artist in Residence (2006), and TEN (2010), among others. He joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory in 2010.

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet