Record date: July 21, 1998
Now, perhaps the attentive reader noticed that I skipped a few records in the years 1995/1996. They were all recorded for ‘Dan records’ and three of them during the birthday celebration tour in Japan. The reason I skipped them at first is because I want to review them in the series that I own. When I was around 15 years old one of my first Waldron discs I bought was ‘Maturity Vol.3: Dual’ with Japanese drummer Takeo Moriyama. Not a very logical start and it really was a very impulsive buy. I was fascinated by the beautiful photograph of Mal on the cover of these series. It cost me 40 euros which was half the money I was being paid for stocking shelves in the local supermarket. And it took 3 months to arrive. The record itself was pretty good, the sound was amazing, the artwork impressive but most of all: I had the feeling I owned something pretty rare. They still are, these Maturity series. It took another 15 years when I decided to complete the series for I could not control my compulsive behavior. When one owns volume three, there’s gotta be a volume one, two, four and five too of course.
Maturity Vol.1: Klassics is the starting point in the series but wasn’t the first to be recorded. It was the last one actually. The title can be taken literally for the record contains interpretations of classical music only. There are compositions by Brahms, Chopin, Grieg and Bartok. Plus intermezzo’s that were written by Mal himself. The results are a bit mixed. Mal has clearly selected compositions that would fit in with his minimalistic and dark approach. Some of his interpretations of this rather sad music are truly beautiful. The playing goes very natural and so the transitions from the more classical oriented theme’s into more jazz improvised territories. The intermezzo’s that were written by Mal himself do not sound out of place at all and are also more based on European classical music. The thing that I really dislike is the addition of vibes and bass to it. If Mal decided to treat these solo it could have resulted in a very favorite record of mine for I love his interpretations of these old compositions. But especially Kator’s vibes really don’t add anything to the music. Quite the contrary: it makes them sound a bit silly in places. Vibes could work out pretty well in Third Stream music as Milt Jackson clearly pointed out with the MJQ. But Katori is just not capable enough to make it really work.
The parts where Mal plays in duet with bassist Nakamura are a little better. But Nakamura isn’t really a very interesting musician too. The way Reggie Workman adjusted his bass playing during those Satie interpretations: that was really something else. Nakamura just plays his part, nothing more and nothing less.
This is a pretty enjoyable effort in a lot of places. I love the way Mal interprets this classical music from centuries ago. I do not know how the real classical music lovers feel about it. What I do know is that Mal really treats them with respect. The original release was in 1999 by Tokuma Japan. It’s not even on Discogs and pretty rare. The Maturity version from 2003 on 3361*BLACK is just as rare and took me quite a while to obtain a copy. The sound of these series is incredibly good and the packaging is lovely, though I can’t read the Japanese liners of course. One of Discogs’ most opportunistic sellers called KUPIKU sometimes offers a copy for around a 1000 euros. Really what are those guys thinking? The easiest and cheapest way to get your copy is to follow them on website like Amazon Japan, Rakuten and Yahoo Japan. You could buy them trough websites like Buyee.
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