07 December 2007
The GuardianJohn Fordham
These two CDs, originally released separately, have been reissued together to commemorate the American bassist/composer Haden's 70th year - also the occasion for Verve's Best of Quartet West compilation, reviewed last month. The Verve disc picked from all Haden's moody, film noir-inflected Quartet West albums. The feel here is both more intimate and heatedly spontaneous, and likely to exert a particularly strong pull for audiences at the quartet's acclaimed opening show at the recent London jazz festival. Half the music is from a recorded private birthday gig for Haden in 1987, with a spookily yearning-sounding Ernie Watts on sax and a cymbal-tingling Billy Higgins on drums (recorded very upfront) on an unusual Quartet West repertoire that includes two full-on Charlie Parker fast boppers, a twisting account of Miles Davis' Nardis, and a lovely version of Pat Metheny's Farmer's Trust. The second CD, from a 1988 public concert, reflects Quartet West's more familiar restraint, reprising Farmer's Trust more delicately (but with less mystery), smouldering on a 20-minute version of Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman, and featuring Haden at his majestically deliberate best on long bass explorations in Silence, and Body and Soul.