Search - Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon :: The Chase and the Steeplechase

Jazz as Good as Bach

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 10/09/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I hope the title of this review gives me away. I'm a "classical" musician and I listen to "classical" music perhaps 80% of the time. All the rest of the world's music gets squeezed into the remaining 20%. But there are listening moments when my confidence is shaken, when I recognize that musical genius is more wide-spread and diverse than my own repertoire. This historic recording of a live session, a little weak on technology and long on audience noises, is for me the most exciting and satisfying performance of "jazz" that I've ever heard: two tenor saxophones, speaking the same musical language but with different voices, improvise around each other, stimulate each other's musical thoughts, hark back to the call-and-answer of ancient music, burst through to the harmonic freedom of the most experimental modern "classical" composers, one of the most vivid musical conversations ever recorded. I'm serious when I say it's as good as Bach, and that's the highest compliment I can pay a performance. Why, if Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray had performed for the King of Prussia, all modern history might have been different!



Whoops! I've just found out (the hard way, by being challenged by a commentator) that this issue of The Chase by Dexter and Wardell is different from the one I've had in my collection for years. The two first cuts, The Chase & The Steeplechase, are really the killer duos I raved about, and they are worth the price of the whole CD easily. But the rest of the disk consists of some short tracks by The Tony Scott Quartet, not even close to the same level of genius."