When Herbie Hancock's genre-defying River: The
Joni Letters, won the 2007 Grammy® Award for "Album of the Year,"
beating out Kanye West, Amy Winehouse, Foo Fighters and Vince Gill, it was a
victory for musical exploration, inspired musicianship and the kind of creative
spirit that the legendary jazz musician has carried throughout his incredible
and influential five-decade career. A true milestone, the album was only the
second jazz recording to win the top honors in the award's history, with the
first being Getz/Gilberto by Stan Getz and João Gilberto in 1965, 43 years
prior. The musical tribute to the iconic Joni Mitchell, which also won
"Best Contemporary Jazz Album," soared up the charts where it peaked
at #5 on the Billboard 200.
In celebration
of the album's first decade anniversary, River: The Joni Letters, will be
released as a 2CD expanded edition with four bonus tracks on December 15 via
Verve Records/UMe with the digital release to follow on December 29. Last
month, the album was released on vinyl for the first time in the U.S.
Upon
release, River was hailed by critics for Hancock's thoughtful interpretations
of Mitchell's compositions, which he used as a jumping off point for extended
musical meditations. The New York Times declared it "an intimate
reinvention issuing from someplace deep inside the music" while NPR
remarked, "Hancock is too smart to follow the tribute-record script. He
doesn't radically overhaul Mitchell's songs — instead, he gently opens them up
and lures the singers into fascinating free-associative conversations."
New York enthused, "Hancock comes to these songs with uncommon sensitivity
and understanding," adding, he "came of age when pop and jazz
overlapped comfortably, and he's at his best when he shows us how they still
can."
Hancock
first worked with Mitchell on the acclaimed singer/songwriter's Mingus record,
an album comprised of collaborations between Mitchell and the great bassist and
composer Charles Mingus. Together with Wayne Shorter, Hancock was part of the
ensemble with which Mitchell tried to craft a new "conversational"
approach to coupling lyrics with instrumental jazz.
"At
this point in my career," Hancock said when the album was announced,
"I want to do something that reaches into the lives and hearts of
people." With River, he did just that. Hancock enlisted
producer/arranger/bassist Larry Klein (a frequent producer and collaborator of
Mitchell's), to help him go deeply into Mitchell's body of work to select songs
that they could adapt to a genre-less and conversational musical approach,
while trying to portray the breadth of Mitchell's gift as a musician and
writer. To add another dimension to their picture of Mitchell's musical world,
they also included two compositions that were important to her musical
development, Shorter's asymmetrical masterpiece "Nefertiti," first
recorded by Hancock and Shorter on Miles Davis' classic album of the same name,
and Duke Ellington's prescient standard "Solitude."
Hancock and
Klein worked for months, carefully reading through Mitchell's lyrics and music,
eventually paring their list down to thirteen songs that they hoped comprised a
panoramic view of the poet's work. They
then assembled a group of the top musicians in the world, including the
incomparable Shorter on soprano and tenor sax, the brilliant bassist and
composer Dave Holland, (a musical cohort of Hancock and Shorter's who shared
their adventurousness, as well as the Miles Davis imprimatur), drummer Vinnie
Colaiuta (a then-recent member of Hancock's band as well as having played
extensively with Mitchell and Sting), and Benin-born guitarist Lionel Loueke,
also a member of Hancock's band.
They went on
to craft arrangements for songs like the often recorded "Both Sides
Now," and "Sweet Bird" (from Mitchell's overlooked classic The
Hissing of Summer Lawns) that transformed the songs into lyrical and elegant
instrumental tone poems, devoid of the trappings of conventional jazz records. "We wanted to create a new vocabulary, a
new way of speaking in a musical sense," Hancock said. Klein added,
"We used the words to guide us. All of the music emanated from the
poetry."
They were
also fortunate to be able to cast the vocal songs with some of the greatest
singers in the music world. Mitchell herself sings the autobiographical musing
on childhood "The Tea Leaf Prophecy," Tina Turner turns the beautiful
prose of "Edith And The Kingpin" into a timeless piece of song-noir,
Norah Jones delivers the wistful classic "Court and Spark," Corinne
Bailey Rae turns the mournful Christmas classic "River" into an
innocent and optimistic poem of bittersweet romance, Brazilian-born Luciana Souza
becomes a dark third voice to Hancock and Shorter on "Amelia," and in
a stark and cinematic closer, Leonard Cohen recites the brilliant and surreal
lyric to "The Jungle Line" as Hancock provides film score-like
improvised accompaniment.
The 10th anniversary
edition of River adds four additional songs of Mitchells', previously released
as Amazon and iTunes exclusives. The extra tracks span Mitchell's expansive
career and include "A Case Of You" and "All I Want"
(featuring Sonya Kitchell) from her masterpiece Blue, "Harlem In
Havana" from her 1998 album Taming The Tiger and "I Had A King,"
the opening song on Mitchell's debut record Song To A Seagull. "Harlem In
Havana" and "I Had A King" are making their debut in any
physical format.
River: The
Joni Letters represented a journey into a new world in Hancock's search for
fresh ground – a world of words – and now with this new expanded release fans
can revisit this stunning album again and dive even deeper into Hancock and
Mitchell's timeless creations.
Disc 1
Court and
Spark (featuring Norah Jones)
Edith And
The Kingpin (featuring Tina Turner)
Both Sides
Now
River
(featuring Corinne Bailey Rae)
Sweet Bird
Tea Leaf
Prophecy (featuring Joni Mitchell)
Solitude
Amelia
(featuring Luciana Souza)
Nefertiti
The Jungle
Line (featuring Leonard Cohen)
Disc 2
A Case Of
You*
All I Want
(featuring Sonya Kitchell)*
Harlem In
Havana*
I Had A
King*
* Bonus
Tracks
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