You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Three tracks to reflect on - Evans, Redman & Doky (*not a law firm)

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Peter and Adam take a moment to share three their favorite tracks to reflect on 2021.Listen to the tunes: Peace Piece (B. Evans), Balance (J. Redman), I Just Wanna Stop (C. M. Doky)Check out Open Studio Pro hereHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hold on a second. I'm busy right now. I'm reflecting on 2021. Oh, man. That's going to work out perfectly because that's exactly what this podcast is about. Oh, awesome.

Let's do it. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you listen to the you'll hear podcast. Music, advice and inspiration coming at you. We're pouring spin drift into cups here, man. We're hydrating. It's big shout out to the spin drift company.

You know what? I feel like they don't need us giving up a plug anymore. I'm starting to see it all around. Yeah, it's everywhere. I saw some tall boys up in New York, like some 40-ounce cans. I know. texted me a picture of juice. And you got excited.

I did get excited. I was like, there's only one person I know this can be excited by now. So today's episode is an interesting one. We've never done anything quite like this. So we were just talking about, you know, it's almost, it's almost 2022. It's the end of the year. It's kind of the time of year where you like to reflect. That's right.

You know what I mean? And so we thought we could. I have a reflex to reflect at this time of year. You have a reflex to reflect. And so we thought we'd give a bit of a brief track. track list that you might use as your soundtrack of reflection. Right. So as you're thinking about everything that's going on,

and believe me, it's been a crazy year for all of us. That's right. It's a crazy time. Yes. And you want to just kind of be pensive and think about things and maybe plan your 2022 and think of that. This could, these three tracks might be a nice, a nice, a nice ambiance. Ambiance, right.

You could have this playing in the background. And look, this is just kind of two of your favorites and one of my favorites that we just put together. We're reflecting on 2021. Full disclosure, none of these tracks are from 2021. I just like to say, one of them is one of, one is my favorites. One, I think is a mutual favorite. Yes. And then one is one of your favorites. Yeah.

I'll put that. Well, I'm excited about, and this is, you know, one that maybe a lot of the one I'm going to be introducing whatever order will doing it that I think you haven't heard. I'm always excited to share some little gems as you've done with me. And I'm just shocked. First of all, let's talk about what's not on this list. What didn't make the list? Oh, there's tons. There's only three tracks.

I know. But I'm shocked that there's any list of anything that you reflect on or love. It doesn't include Herbie Hancock's secrets. I'm kind of shocked myself. Can I just say? How do you even reflect without having that playing? I'm going to reflect on that. But I'm going to use this playlist to reflect on my actions.

So what do we have first? So first, I think this is the most, this track is so reflective that, that Miles Davis basically sampled it, but with the actual composer in his band. This is piece. By example, you mean, wrote another song that was written by him. Around it.

Yeah, this is Bill Evans piece, piece from everybody digs Bill Evans. And it's going to sound very familiar to K.O.B. fans, kind of blue fans. That's right. Because this is also flamenco sketches, or at least it's kind of flamenco sketch. It's not exact, actually. Well, we just played this.

I was like, oh, we're going to do flamen. I actually thought it was flamenco sketched at first. It's not. So this is Bill Evans piece, piece from everybody takes Bill. Pretty reflective. It's very reflective. I mean, it's just, look, the power of music, of great music, and especially of the piano, which is so beautifully played.

Simple. Simple stuff. We can all play that, right? Does that touch something you would be interested? Would that be something you might be interested in? Yes, I'm very much interested. And spend a lot of time stealing it or emulating. That's a beautiful sound.

As most pianists have that have. You've got a really lovely quiet bell touch. I rip off all the time, by the way. But you know what? It's not, I mean, yeah, well, we're all ripping. I mean, Bill Evans would have talked about who he was ripping off, but I think that it is like the power of the piano, an instrument that can do so much.

You know, we talk about it being the whole orchestra, the whole big band and everything. There's a lot of different situations, a lot of power there. But when you just pull back on it, you have to spend actually a lot of, like, focused energy to pull back with it. You know, both in terms of the amount that you're playing and with the touch and with the sound, to be able to harness.

all that power to just play something simple and reflective like that. And nobody did it better than Bill Evans. Yeah, that's true. Our next track is from the Joshua Redmond album Beyond from the year 2000. This is balance. And I didn't even think about this until I was putting together this list. But listen to the track we just heard from Bill Evans, piece, piece. So now it starts.

And here's the beginning of balance. Peace, piece. Balance. Is that great? Yep. So instead of going, we're going? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is, we've listened to this album together, actually.

Yeah. I think we listened to the entire album. I think we actually had the whole band on. We did. We had them all talking about, you personal friends with the entire band. You know, what can I say? Got all their numbers.

I text them regularly. WhatsApp, some of them, you know, that are in other countries. Yeah, but this is like this whole album, and I love the, what's it? Like, every time I hear that, That's not the track we're going to hear. That's, that's, I don't even know the names of these tunes because I just, this is one of those albums I love listening to all the way through, but something about

this record always makes me think of like modern, modern times, like 21st century. It is the 24th. And I never thought, I mean, but I knew it was from around, but it was recorded and released right in 2000. It was such a big record too. It was. It was. It was.

It was. It was. The 21st century of modern jazz. Yeah. But whenever I talked to any, you know, Ruben Rogers or Aaron Goldberg or Josh Redmond or Greg Hutchinson about this. They're always a little dark on it. A little negative, like, because I think this was the first album that band made,

and they felt like they were not that cohesive of a unit. Well, their fans love it. Their fans love it. And I would just say that maybe there's something to that with, like, it's very hard to be objective because I'm thinking when I play with Joshua Redmond, the record everybody's always asking and they love it is the Live of the Vanguard. That was made the first month we were together as a band. Yeah.

So there's something to that energy. Yeah, maybe it is. And I think it's, you know, it's your own personal feeling of discomfort. Like you weren't comfortable yet, probably, right? Like totally comfort in your skin within the relationships of the band and all that. Yeah. And like really known music and living with it for a couple years. But for your audience, there's a lot of energy in that.

Maybe there's a lot of discovery and some reflection. Some. That just leads perfectly to balance. Like beautiful ostettos. And gorgeous melodies. This record, that's like, man, that's the theme of. this record, right? Beautiful Austinanos are all over the place. I remember just being mind-blown. I actually saw this record perform live here at Jazz St. Louis before I heard it on a CD or whatever,

saw them perform it live. And I just remember being mind-blown by the whole concept. Yes. And the whole thing. I mean, I still think about it. Yeah, I think this is like my favorite quartet of Josh's, maybe because of this record in a way. A lot of our fans here are going to disagree and say the quartet you were in are their favorite. Well, no, that was a good, that was a good quartet. I don't know, for me. Was it a quintet mostly? It was mostly a quintet.

It started as a quartet with that vanguard thing, but it was, yeah, the next year with Peter Bernstein. No, it was, I just think, I feel like this record, this band. Yeah. I mean, big shout out to James Farber, the recording engineer, who recorded, I mean, the records I did with Joshua, he was the engineer. Genius. Genius.

I mean, you hear, like, I mean, of course, the music. music has to be killing. Yep. It's your capturing. But I mean, look at the, did you hear the clarity and the resonance? And like, it sounds like everybody shoved up. Everybody was separate. I can tell you that right now.

Yeah, yeah. That's just the way it was recorded at that time. I mean, not always, but the ability to be able to do that and then control what that gives you the flexibility, you know, as an audio engineer. Every instrument sounds so beautiful. But it sounds like they are like right up on each other. And it's so great. All right.

We're going out on a track by Chris Mendoki. This is what I don't know about. Yeah. So this is one. When we talk about, you know, I think for like you just, the personal story, there was a specific moment. I remember hearing this. I probably had heard this track before, but I was in a certain situation and I heard

it and I'll always sort of remember that situation. And it wasn't this year. It was actually about eight years ago. And I've loved this track ever since. But the transformational power of music to take you back, it's kind of like a smell you have. You remember a meal that you had or like you have a sip of wine and it all of a sudden and takes you back 20, 30, 50 years, eight years, three years, or whatever.

But I think about this, especially at this time of year as we reflect on kind of where we are, where we're going is like the moments that we have and that we experience with music, like that's what it's all about. Like that, the moment we have right now to listen to this is like everything. You know, God willing, we'll have another moment in an hour and tomorrow, whatever. But the memories of this, I mean, we can, you can look at a picture. some time and think back to like, wow, I forgot about that time. And then like you start to piece things together.

But sometimes like a mental image of being somewhere or like maybe when you meet your partner for the first time and you remember what she or he look like. I mean, like this stuff is powerful. And I think with music, when you connect that with a situation, you know, in interaction with a group of people or sometimes it's just by yourself. But when you make that connection with a track, I mean, that's priceless, you know. And I love reflecting. on that and I mean I'm super fortunate to have a number of those with different kinds of music but this is one of those for sure so and I thought it would be fun too because I you know when I found like you hadn't heard this and I think a lot of folks haven't but I know you're a big Layla Hathaway fan who's the featured vocalist on this oh nice yeah and I mean this is kind of a cool placement of a song I just want to stop which was like Gino Vinelli um had a big hit with this georgie porgy you know what I'm saying straight out of Montreal which is one of your favorite cities exactly

You could probably conjure up some reflective moment. Oh, my gosh. You know, some of which you probably can't share on the podcast. But that's, you know, that's for you to reflect on. So this is, we want to start at the beginning. You want to jump right to the voters. We'll jump right to it. We'll kind of get into it.

Thank you, everybody. Hey, have a great new year. We're probably going to have some best ofs here for the rest of the week. Yeah, yeah. So some reflection on 2021. Hope you all have a healthy, happy new year. Stay safe on New Year's ease. Stay lifted.

Stay safe. Stay connected. through the music, even if we have to be socially distanced via the podcast or whatever. Yeah. But support each other. Hug your loved ones as we enter into 2022 in a reflective but optimistic mode. Peace and piano.

I get the sweetest thoughts of you. Memories of love. I tried so hard to take it. But I know my heart won't make it. I just want. tell you what I'll tell you what I...