When the legendary pianist and composer NEA Jazz Master Andrew Hill’s live A Beautiful Day was issued in 2002, he had long left Blue Note in 1969. The intervening years were sketchy, with releases on European labels and long hiatuses to care for his ailing wife on the West Coast. In the late ‘90s, Hill returned to New York to record Dusk (200O) and the subject at hand for Palmetto Records. A Beautiful Day, recorded five years before Hill’s passing in 2007, is often called Hill’s big band record, but it sounds like no big band recording you’ve heard.
As you view the album jacket, you’ll see Andrew Hill Sextet Plus 10, perhaps his way of clueing us not to expect the typical big band sound. Typically, a big band plays with elaborate, structured arrangements, but not here. They only rehearsed short fragments and had no idea how these disparate pieces would fit together. We’ll go into more detail on this later. Still, this reissue, issued initially as a single album, besides the fresh remastering that takes advantage of technology not available at the time, has the band’s theme “11/8” extended to six minutes from the original two and adds a 16-minute performance of the title track from the first night of the band’s four-night stint at Birdland to show how different the same piece could come across on a given night.
Hill was a risk-taker of the highest order. He never wanted two performances to sound the same. He lived for the thrill of the band coming together for magnificent moments while accepting that there would also be failing moments. The musical director and trumpeter in the sextet, Ron Horton, had never encountered an approach like Hill’s, nor had most of the musicians. As mentioned, rehearsals were only for short fragments, and beyond that, there was no set list, instead just a list of instructions to Horton, such as “Band plays BA1 from the beginning, but trombones play BA2 from bar 20 backward to bar 10…” The opening “Divine Revelation” was initially a structured arrangement, but Hill took the music away just as the performance began. Soloists had no actual structures and were often left to improvise freely without a net. Although purposely chaotic at times, it holds together. The listener doesn’t always get the melody and harmonies associated with a large ensemble (except the theme “11/8”). Instead, it becomes mostly a series of solos with the band filling in the gaps, almost like turning the big band concept on its head.
The results were pretty democratic, with 12 of the 16 band members getting a chance to step forward. Hill, deferring to his musicians, solos on just five of the eight. The textures of these pieces vary dramatically, though. The two versions of the title track are more conventional, featuring five or six soloists equally split between woodwinds and brass.
Highlights include the fanfare-imbued opener “Divine Revelation,” the most arranged piece on the disc. Even though Hill took the music away, Horton knew it very well, so the orchestral devices are more evident. It also features a feisty sparring between the two tenors, Greg Tardy and Aaron Stewart.. John Savage engages with Hill on a gorgeous flute-piano duet before bass clarinetist Marty Ehrlich delivers arguably the album’s most impressive solo on “Faded Beauty.” Hill is in peak form on “New Pinnochio,” where we hear practically a piano trio with Scott Colley on bass, and Nasheet Waits on drums. Other curiosities are the rare tuba solo from Jose D’Avila on “Bellezza” and J.D. Parron’s baritone sax solo on “J Di.” The two versions of the title track are must-hear, apart in so many details to describe adequately except to say that Tardy on tenor and Ehrlich on alto are beasts on both versions and that the Thursday version has Hill sitting out with additional solos from trombonist Charles Gordon, altoist Savage, trumpeter Bruce Staelens versus Dave Ballou on the first, and a short turn from drummer Waits.
In short, this is an edgy, avant-garde effort that reveals different colors and nuances with each listen.
