This late-period Art Pepper CD is neither a must-have recording nor something so slight that it should be labeled "for Pepper completists only." It captures the alto saxophonist at a San Francisco club date in September 1975, a pivotal period in his career. Just a month earlier, after a drug-related prison stint, he had completed Living Legend, his first studio recording in 15 years. Like Legend, Renascence finds Pepper brimming with ideas and in stylistic flux, moving away from the sweeter, lighter tone of his early days toward a deeper sonority and a beseeching quality influenced by John Coltrane. The difference between the discs is partly sidemen--instead of Legend's Hampton Hawes, Charlie Haden, and Shelley Manne in the studio, Pepper makes do with a decent but hardly distinctive local rhythm section on the bandstand. Renascence also bristles from the live setting, with the uptempo "What Laurie Likes" even more free-wheeling than its studio counterpart, and the ballad "Here's That Rainy Day" more uneven, though still filled with the sort of plaintive pain and beauty that summed up Pepper's star-crossed life and was his stylistic stock-in-trade. Tadd Dameron's "Good Bait" and Pepper's "Straight Life" round out the disc. --Britt Robson
Renascence,Art Pepper,Galaxy,Bop,Jazz,Jazz Music,Pop
Jazz Music:
- Repartee
- Simply Jazz: Guitar Jazz [Import]
- Simply Jazz: Latin Jazz [Import]
- Simply Jazz: Sax Jazz [Import]
- Sister Luna
- Sometime Soon
- Sonarchy and Synergy [CD-single]
- Spontaneous Ragtime
- Talking Hot [Import]
- The Ancient Myth of Men and Women
Jazz Music
Opera for Pleasure: Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann
Music: The Very Best of Gregorian Chants and Other Sacred Mu
Songs for a Raney Day [Import] [Limited Edition] [Original recording remastered]
Richard Wagner: Orchestra Music