Randy Weston Composer, Pianist,
Executive Prod.
Fatoumate Weston Executive Producer
Blaise Grandjean Mix-Master-Recording engineer
Moctar Cisse
African Rhythms Logo
Chester Higgins Jr.
Photos
Diane English
Artwork
Christopher Mack
Graphic Designer
|
CD 1
1 The Call (Weston)
2 Softness (Weston)
3 Kucheza Blues (Weston)
4 Childrens Icicle Song (Weston)
5 African Lady (Weston)
6 Pretty Strange (Weston)
7 Willies Tune (Weston)
8 Nite in Medina (Weston)
9 Sister Gladys (Weston)
10 Yesterdays (Jerome Kern)
11 Beef Blues Stew (Weston)
12 Blues Blues (Weston)
13 Tanjah (Weston)
14 Solemn Meditation (Sam Gill)
15 Love the Mystery of Love (Guy Warren)
|
SOUND - solo piano
My very first recording – Randy Weston with Sam Gill in 1954 for Riverside Records Produced by Bill Gaines and Orin Keepnew included several solo recordings,
but it was during my first tour in Europe in 1974 with my Band Steve Berrios (Percussions), Ahmed Abdul-Malik (Oud), William Allen (Bass),
at my concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival; I added Don Moye (Drums) and
Billy Harper (Tenor Sax & Flute) and we performed and recorded a disc together called Carnival,
when I received the message that the high Master Duke Ellington had died.
That night I played a 10-minute piano solo in his honor. After this particular concert many people said to me "you have to play more piano solos".
My first piano solo performance was at the Antibes Jazz Festival in France, and my solo career began.
In addition Duke Ellington's sister, Ruth Ellington insisted that she preferred to hear me playing piano solos.
- Randy Weston
When Randy Weston touches a piano, he reaches way, way back, to a time before pianos, back before civilization begins.
Like the great spiritual diviners of Africa and the bluesmen of the Diaspora,
he reaches into the world of sound not yet born, creating statements of such startling originality that terms like "modern" or "avant-garde" are meaningless.
He demolishes distinctions between traditional and modern,
enveloping us with what really counts: the music's spiritual essence.
And there is no better way to capture the spiritual dimensions of this great music
than Weston, in his solitude, singing, praying, meditating, shouting, through the medium of a grand piano, which he transforms into a giant 88-stringed kora.
Weston's left-hand is a rumbling, majestic drum chorus while his right hand is a spirited circle of dancers.
Everything he plays is a praise song to the ancestors, especially his musical predecessors.
He has absorbed the spirits of all the great "ticklers"- Duke, Art Tatum, Earl Hines,
Nat Cole, Monk, all of them - and through his fertile imagination he always takes us
on a journey from the ancient to the future and back again.
- Robin D. G. Kelley
" Weston's pianistics have an individuality all their own.
When Randy plays, a combination of strength and gentleness, virility and velvet
emerges from the keys in an ebb and flow of sound seemingly as natural as the
waves of the sea."
- Langston Hughes
" The knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe."
- The Mysticism of Sound, Hazrat Inayat Khan
" Weston has the biggest sound of any jazz pianist since Ellington and Monk,
as well as the richest most inventive beat, but his art is more than projection
and time; it's the result of a studious and inspired intelligence."
- Stanley Crouch
|
|
|