Edito de Pinnacle; Live & Unreleased from Keystone KornerIt was my first time in New York City. I?m sitting in my dark little room in The Wellington Hotel on 7th Ave. at 55th and the phone rings. It was Freddie, ?It?s freezing outside! I don?t know how people live here in New York! You wanna go for a walk?? I put on my old winter coat and rushed down to the lobby. He walked out of the elevator in a sharp gray suit and hat, a big smile on his face. He nodded towards the door, ?New York City! Let?s go!? We walked down 7th Ave. together as he told me about some restaurants close by, both of us smiling at a couple of beautiful women walking the other way. We stop at the corner of 53rd St., and wait for the light. I?m in New York! The light changes, and I step off of the curb to cross. In the same moment, I feel something quickly pull back on the back of my coat; a taxi roars by, running the light. I?m on the road for one day, and my boss has already had to save my life. After an audition and a couple of quick rehearsals, to my surprise, I?d gotten the bass gig with Freddie Hubbard. To a 19-year-old kid from suburban purgatory in L.A., this felt like the beginning of a new life. I had listened to Freddie for years, transcribed his solos, played along with his records, and harbored the notion that someday I might play with him. After the second rehearsal, Freddie patiently sat at the piano, showing me how he had written one of my favorite tunes of his, then gave me my airline ticket saying, ?I have to get back there early for a record date; I?ll see you in New York!? To say that Freddie was a mentor is a vast understatement. His presence in my life was one of the turning points that all restless souls wait for. Aside from showing us all what could be possible on the trumpet, he provided a nightly environment where one could experiment and create, testing the very limit of what one was capable of on their instrument. He had created a musical language for himself, and was never satisfied with players around him unless they were tirelessly striving to do the same. Freddie was several people. He was a teacher, a demon, a loyal and kind friend, an irresponsible rogue, a generous mentor, and a merciless taskmaster. Like Miles, whom he idolized, he had reinvented the trumpet. He had come up from the streets of Indianapolis, through the ranks of Art Blakey?s Jazz Messengers, and risen to the top of the New York scene, before coming to Los Angeles. He had been hazed, headbutted, ripped off and shorted, and he wasn?t going to let anyone get through his band without letting them pay the price too. To my mind, much of his best playing occurred outside of the recording studio, in live settings, when the fatigue of travel on the road had worn off the veneer of self- consciousness that we all have to wrestle down within ourselves. This album is a good example of what might have happened on a night when all of our defenses were down. On nights like this it felt like we were flying. Nobody ever played the trumpet like this. ?Larry Klein I opened the Keystone Korner in San Francisco in July of 1972, as a beer-only bar (with 32 brands of barley and hops from all over the world) with world-class live jazz music. In February of 1973, Freddie Hubbard joined forces with McCoy Tyner, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Ron Carter and Elvin Jones at the 3,500-seat Paramount Theater in Oakland to play a special benefit concert for Keystone Korner that raised enough money to buy the club its full liquor license from the State of California. In January of 1975, Grover Washington, Jr. and George Benson donated their musical services for a similar kind of fund-raising event at the Paramount which paid for the expenses of adding a full-service kitchen that enabled the Keystone Korner to admit all ages of jazz fans, students and patrons, and to increase its capacity from 130 to 175 seats. Freddie Hubbard was one of the founding fathers of Keystone Korner as well as one of the artistic pillars of this ?home away from home? for so many jazz giants during the thousands of magical nights in its storied 11-year run, during which time Freddie played the club over a couple of dozen times with his own bands, and with special ensembles featuring Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, Cedar Walton, Eddie Gomez, Al Foster, Billy Higgins, Louis Hayes and the Heath Brothers. Shortly after his comeback to worldwide touring and a concert at the Concord Pavilion on September 26, 1981, Miles Davis was enjoying a brief hang with Freddie in my Keystone back office after the second set, and he told his fellow trumpeter that ?you may never realize it, but you are the baddest mother****er on the planet right now.? And so he was. With all the focus on his awesome pyrotechnics and soaring sound, what was most often overlooked about his trumpet playing was that nobody played with any more heart, soul and swing than Freddie Hubbard. And nobody ever will. ?Todd Barkan, January 2011 I opened the door to Keystone Korner [on my first visit in 1976] and walked into what felt like Manhattan. The jazz club was small and dark, and the sounds coming from the bandstand?the honks, the cries, the sirens of the streets, the confinement and freedom of New York?rushed at me with such force that I stood in the doorway as though rooted to the floor. Home. I didn?t even realize how homesick I had been. When I went back the next week to hear Elvin Jones, my friend Bob introduced me to Keystone?s owner, Todd Barkan and told Todd that I should be allowed to photograph in the club. Todd agreed that I could come in whenever I wanted, without paying, as long as I gave Todd a print of whomever I photographed. It was an incredible offer?a gift, really. Elvin Jones was the first musician I photographed, and for the next seven years, I spent two or three nights a week at the club. I wouldn?t have been able to do that if Keystone Korner hadn?t been, as musicians described it, ?a family kind of place.? I often brought my daughter with me and she was always welcomed. When she wasn?t helping collect tickets with the door-people who adored her, she was hanging out with musicians or sleeping in the back room. The light was atrocious in Keystone Korner. Overhead spots made hot light on the protruding planes of the musicians? faces and cut deep shadows under their eyes. I learned my craft looking at highlights and dark places. I just worked with what I had, and learned more about the effects of light and the limits of film than I ever would have in a classroom. I wanted to capture both the rush of being in the moment and the power of the people creating music on stage, those great artists who were telling us all about freedom. Wanting to be taken seriously as a photographer I established a routine that kept me in good stead with the musicians. I knew the ways in which black musicians had been disrespected and I didn?t want to contribute to that. So I would go to the club on Tuesday night when the band opened its week-long stay, listen to the music, introduce myself, and ask the band?s permission to make photographs. The musicians seemed genuinely pleased that I sought their consent, and nobody ever refused me. On Thursdays, I would return to Keystone to photograph, and on Sunday, the last night of each engagement, I?d bring prints for each of the musicians, as well as one for Todd Barkan. My one regret was that I didn?t tape the stories I was privy to as I sat in the back room between and after sets listening to the musicians talk with each other. The back room was where the elders taught the youngsters the things they?d need to know about in addition to mouthpieces and harmony. How they?d need to step around disharmony or become their own mouthpieces when a club owner refused to pay them or when their bus was stuck in an Iowa snowstorm and they couldn?t call Triple A. Embedded in the musicians? tales that evoked knowing laughter were the tools for hammering together an improvised life. You couldn?t make the music and survive without this knowledge and those lessons didn?t come in school or in the books?they came from the stories shared in the club back rooms and on the back seats of buses during the long nights the itinerant musicians traveled in order to make a living. Keystone was, for all the musicians, a home and a haven. ?Kathy Sloane Thanks to Todd Barkan, who has allowed us to dip into his formidable archive of jazz recordings, we are privileged to release this recording of a true giant of jazz, the late Freddie Hubbard. I have been a fan of Freddie ever since, at the age of 19, I booked him for a concert in the mid-?60s at Columbia University in New York. There have been many recordings of Hubbard, but few show him at his absolute best like this one. Every moment on this CD, chosen from live performances he gave at the famous Keystone Korner Jazz Club in San Francisco in 1980, is full of the patented Hubbard passion and excitement. This is the mature Hubbard, astounding with his amazing power and technique, with equal helpings of inventiveness and creativity. We feature five of Freddie?s original compositions, some well known, some lesser known. We are also thrilled to be adding to recorded history by including his performance of John Coltrane?s ?Giant Steps,? which was never previously recorded and released by Freddie Hubbard. It is so important when choosing posthumous material that the artist is respected, that the choices made are based on quality and musicality. Thanks to our team of Todd, David Weiss and myself, we have created a celebration of some of Hubbard?s brightest moments, which is why we call this CD, ?Pinnacle.? I hope that, once you have heard this CD, you will know why Freddie Hubbard is considered by many as the greatest jazz trumpeter ever. If you would like to learn more about this recording, please visit our website Resonance Records.org where we have video interviews with three of the musicians who perform with Freddie on this CD, Bassist Larry Klein, Pianist Billy Childs, and Trombonist Phil Ranelin, all integral members of his longest running band. ?George Klabin, President, Resonance Records Lire la suite