A concert produced independently of any tour, a tribute to an artist who was able to distil precious poetry right up to the very last moment.
Tommy Flanagan recorded 'So in Love' in Milan on 17 November 2000, no one could have imagined that exactly one year later, on 16 November 2001, he would pass away. 'The Jones brothers were proof that music could be both a rigorous science and a family affair,' he said. Art Tatum lived in Toledo: Tommy never missed a single live performance. A family affair: his first piano lessons with his brother Johnson, and then open-air rehearsals with the Joneses: Thad, Hank, Elvin. They took him with them to New York. Tommy admired everything about Hank and watched him for hours: that unique way of blending swing with bop, the lightness of his touch, his flair for accompaniment. Flanagan, by nature, does not steal, he reworks; he does not emulate, he innovates. And there he was in '56, recording two incredible albums with Thad, including 'Mad Thad', which features 'Bird Song' --the opening track on this album of ours. That rhythm change-- a traditional structure broken down into shifts -- became his testing ground for the art of filling the spaces behind Thad's trumpet. In So in love in Milan, he recalls those years with a friend and a 'relative': the friend is Rufus Reid (Thad Jones's bassist, once again, and a long-time collaborator of Dexter Gordon), the brother is Albert Heath. Family matters: 'Tootie' is the third brother of Jimmy and Percy to make jazz history, and Flanagan finds a 'third' home; the drummer arrives in NYC a year after him and so, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, records Coltrane's debut in '57. Love letters: here he dedicates a two-minute solo intro to his "mentor" Tadd Dameron in a spine-tingling rendition of If You Could See Me Now. With Liza, he pays tribute to Gershwin, Tatum (he played it almost all the time) and Ella, whom he had accompanied so often on this standard. Ella, who held him close for so many years, and with whom they played the melancholy of Cole Porter: 'So in Love', above all. And how could one not love all of this?
Track Listing
BIRDSONG IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW LIZA SUNSET AND THE MOCKINGBIRD RAINCHECK SO IN LOVE
