Ahmad Jamal's 59 Years
Ahmad Jamal
Episode:The One Who Can't Wait, and the Piano That Can
1958: a live recording from a Chicago club. 1970: an awakening captured in a New York studio. 2017: a love letter to a French city. For 59 years Ahmad Jamal has built music out of not playing. But what lives inside that silence changes completely as the years pass.
A live recording from Chicago's Pershing Hotel. plays this Gershwin standard with an unbelievable economy of notes. Wide space between phrases, held in place by bassist Israel Crocker and drummer Vernell Fournier. Miles Davis is said to have heard this album and changed the sound of his own band. Three minutes and 33 seconds. Brief. But Jamal's entire aesthetic is inside that brevity.
Twelve years later. New label (Impulse!), new rhythm section — bassist Jamil Nasser, drummer Frank Gant. The of 1958 was a pianist who left space; the Jamal of 1970 is a pianist who shows you what happens inside that space. The note count is still low. But the weight of each individual note has changed. The density at the opening of the title track, when the left-hand bass enters. The silence is the same — but twelve years of experience have made it denser.
47 more years. at 87. The opening track of an album dedicated to Marseille, the port city of southern France. Percussion comes to the foreground and Jamal's piano drifts above it. Different from the 1958 live tension, different from the 1970 studio density. Calm — but not coasting. Every note that 87-year-old hands place on the keys is chosen. The place a man who spent 59 years not-playing finally arrived.