Search - Art Farmer :: Art Farmer Live at Stanford Jazz Workshop

Nothing unexpected, unfortunately.

Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 05/30/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The accumulated years can be especially tough on vocalists and wind players. Sometime around 1980 Harold Land's crisp, incisive articulations and incandescent sound deserted him, and intonation problems began to emerge. The change was slower and less obvious in Farmer, but you can still sense the practically heroic effort required to sustain tone and maintain pitch. For both players, the ideas are still there along with much of the technique, but the physical apparatus of the human body is becoming as much of a challenge to control as any instrument--and with this music a player has enough to think about without adding the burden of an uncooperative embrochure, diminished lung capacity, failing memory, etc. Give both Land and Farmer all the credit in the world for keeping it going, staying in the game and playing for all they're worth as long as there's a game to be played.



The responsive audience is a plus on this date. In fact, maybe they, too, are aware that although the sounds they're hearing fall considerably short of what these two giants were once capable of producing, both players on the present occasion are laying it all on the line. Unlike some jazz "legends," or "traditionalists," who merely coasted in late career, doing the same song every night and even singing it to lessen the stress, Farmer and Land are still playing as though their lives depended on it--which may not have been far from the truth. You can only hope that many in the audience went back to the early recordings to discover what the fuss was all about."