Available August 25 on Smoke Sessions Records
Release Performances August 25 – 27 at Smoke Jazz &
Supper Club
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn,” Eden Ahbez wrote in
“Nature Boy,” his classic song, “is just to love and be loved in return.” That
may not be something that pianist Harold Mabern has taught in the classroom
during his decades as an influential educator, but it’s certainly a lesson that
he’s passed on time and again by example. On his latest album, To Love and Be
Loved, Mabern is joined by a multi-generational band that brings together one
of his legendary peers with some of his most acclaimed former students – all of
whom play with the same love and respect that Mabern has shared with them over
the years.
Due out August 25 on Smoke Sessions Records, Mabern’s To
Love and Be Loved reunites Mabern with 88-year-old drumming legend Jimmy Cobb,
with whom he first played in Miles Davis’s band during a brief but memorable
stint in 1963. The rhythm section is completed by the impeccably swinging
bassist Nat Reeves, while the frontline features Mabern’s prize student and
frequent collaborator Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone and, on three tracks,
another Mabern protégé, trumpeter Freddie Hendrix. Master percussionist Cyro
Baptista completes the line-up with a performance on the opening track.
To Love and Be Loved takes its name not from the “Nature
Boy” line quoted above (à propos as it may be), but from a rarely revived Jimmy
Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn tune written for the classic 1958 film Some Came Running.
Originally performed by Frank Sinatra in a lush Nelson Riddle arrangement, the
song was nominated for an Oscar but hasn’t been a major part of the jazz
songbook since. Long a fan of the song, Mabern was determined to record it,
albeit with a completely different feel. In the rendition that opens the album,
the sweeping ballad is transformed into an up-tempo number with a slight bossa
nova feel.
While he learned most valuable lessons the old-fashioned way
– on the bandstand – Mabern has endeavored to pass along similar experiences to
his students during his remarkable 36-year tenure at William Paterson University.
The results speak for themselves – a partial list of graduates who’ve come
under his tutelage include, in addition to Alexander and Hendrix, Tyshawn
Sorey, Joe Farnsworth, Bill Stewart, Johnathan Blake, Roxy Coss and Mark
Guiliana.
“The way I teach, you have to learn by using your ears, the
way Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie did,” Mabern explains. “This music
didn’t come from the school; this music comes from the streets. School is just
an enhancement.”
True to his determination not to draw a line between
educational and practical experience, Mabern approached To Love and Be Loved in
the same way. The recording date followed a weekend of performances at Smoke
Jazz & Supper Club, the label’s namesake venue, with little planned in the
way of repertoire and no music on the stands. The things that worked live,
including Hendrix’s impromptu appearance with the band, were carried into the
studio, though only the title track, Hendrix’s arrangement of Lee Morgan’s “The
Gigolo,” and Mabern’s radically revised “I Get a Kick Out of You,” were decided
on beforehand.
With musicians this skilled, little more is needed. The most
important common element, Mabern notes, comes from yet another quotation, this
one better known in jazz circles – “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that
swing.”
“There’s two things you can’t teach in this business,”
Mabern states. “You can’t teach people how to swing, and you can’t teach people
how to play the blues. You can write notes down and you can demonstrate, but if
they don’t have the internal instincts to do it, it’s not going to work. Jimmy
Cobb likes to swing. Eric Alexander likes to swing. Nat Reeves has a beautiful,
big beat, and he likes to swing. We’re what you might call traditionalists.
That’s the thing that made it such a joy.”
In discussing his reimaging of classic tunes and the
inspiration for the album, Mabern quotes an unlikely mentor for a jazz
musician: Albert Einstein. The famed physicist once said, “Imagination is more
important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and
understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever
will be to know and understand.” Mabern took that message to heart, letting his
own imagination run free on his new release, To Love and Be Loved.
“To Love and Be Loved” was produced by Paul Stache and Damon
Smith and recorded live in New York at Sear Sound’s Studio C on a Sear-Avalon
custom console at 96KHz/24bit and mixed to ½” analog tape using a Studer
mastering deck. Available in audiophile HD format.
Harold Mabern Album Releases Performances:
August 25 – 27 | Smoke Jazz Club | New York, NY
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