- Beautiful Love
- Suddenly
- Giant Steps
- Darn That Dream
- Miss Bea
- Bluesin’ with Bob
- You Taught My Heart to Sing
- Rhythm-N-Ning
- Lady From Caracas
- Monk’s dream
- Rio
- Naima
This solo piano session kicks off with that lovely old tune
Beautiful Love, the sleeve credits this to McCoy Tyner as composer.
I am not too sure that Vincent Young, who wrote it, would be
too happy about that! McCoy Tyner’s performance of the tune
however I am sure he would be happy with, it is sublime.
Suddenly really is a Tyner composition and demonstrates his
ability as a composer, unfortunately my review copy had a fault
on this track and so I only caught the theme. Tyner’s former
boss, the late John Coltrane for whom he was in the piano chair
for 6 years, wrote Giant Steps. During this period, Tyner will
have become very familiar with this theme as it was always requested
wherever ‘Trane’ played. This performance is sheer virtuosity
as he dazzles us with tempo changes and a technique the equivalent
of anyone in the business.
Darn That Dream is a beautiful melody, in his performance of
it, we can hear his influences Art Tatum, Monk, Bud Powell and
even Oscar Peterson, all blend into the unique style that is
McCoy Tyner.
The next 3 tracks Miss Bea, Bluesin’ with Bob and You taught
My Heart are all Tyner originals. I had to listen a few times
to these tracks to understand what was happening, but found
the exercise most rewarding.
There are two Monk compositions Rhythm-N-Ning and Monk’s Dream. On
the former, Tyner generates enormous swing in the way I have only
heard Oscar Peterson manage previously. The last track is another
Coltrane tune Naima.
I don’t know whether the audience was in a state of shock from
the sheer brilliance of this performance, because the applause
at the end was not as enthusiastic as could have been expected
from such an outstanding performance.
Congratulations to TDK for releasing it
Don Mather
CD Reviews
TDK
JAZZ CLUB 10 5189 9 DV-JMCTY
