The Qobuz Ideal Discography

Once again, the spine, if not the heart of Awase isn’t Nik Bärtsch’s piano. Because whenever the Zurich musician gets his band Ronin going, he builds his music as well as his improvisations around Kaspar Rast’s XXL ability on the drums. As often with this self-proclaimed zen funk gang, the hypnotic power of rhythmic motifs gives a supreme unity to this jazz that sounds like no other. The term Awase comes from martial arts, meaning “moving together” in the sense of matching energies. A fitting metaphor for the dynamic precision, tessellated grooves and balletic minimalism of Bärtsch’s crew. Six years have passed since Ronin’s last release, a live recording in Europe and Japan between 2009 and 2011. In the meantime, the quintet has turned into a quartet and integrated a new bassist, Thomy Jordi. A completely new look for Ronin version 2018… A mutation that delivers a new form of freedom and flexibility in their approach to compositions. Their interactions and energy seem to compound! Once again it’s very hard to resist to the hypnotic power of the motifs they string together with superb fluidity over the 65 minutes of Awase. © Max Dembo/Qobuz

Way Out West is a jazz essential, certainly as indispensable as its cover created by William Claxton. For Sonny Rollins, the album is a conglomerate of firsts. Recorded on March 7, 1957 in Los Angeles, the album is the first collaboration of Rollins with two other musical giants: Ray Brown on the bass and Shelly Manne on drums. Also for the first time, Rollins has not invited a piano player to his band and has begun exploring new, powerful solos with a simple rhythm section. His tenor saxophone’s sound is amazing and Brown and Manne are hardly reduced to simple stooges. The trio is working as one, subtle in its conversations and improvisations and powerful when the rhythms get tougher. When Way Out West came out a few years before the launching of Coltrane’s revolution, Sonny Rollins was the undisputed god of the sax kingdom.

Way Out West is a jazz essential, certainly as indispensable as its cover created by William Claxton. For Sonny Rollins, the album is a conglomerate of firsts. Recorded on March 7, 1957 in Los Angeles, the album is the first collaboration of Rollins with two other musical giants: Ray Brown on the bass and Shelly Manne on drums. Also for the first time, Rollins has not invited a piano player to his band and has begun exploring new, powerful solos with a simple rhythm section. His tenor saxophone’s sound is amazing and Brown and Manne are hardly reduced to simple stooges. The trio is working as one, subtle in its conversations and improvisations and powerful when the rhythms get tougher. When Way Out West came out a few years before the launching of Coltrane’s revolution, Sonny Rollins was the undisputed god of the sax kingdom.

Like its creator, Kamasi Washington's triple album debut, The Epic, is imposing, multi-faceted and aspiring to change music forever. A close collaborator with fellow innovative Angelenos Stephen Bruner (Thundercat), Steven Ellison (Flying Lotus) and Kendrick Lamar, Washington's evolved vision mixes bebop, soul jazz, old school organ trio R&B, space jazz and fusion à la Miles Davis. At the center of this prismatic, conscious-expanding maelstrom is Washington's bodacious horn whose tone and approach can by turns be compared to the playing of Azar Lawrence, Pharoah Sanders and especially John Coltrane. The musical forces assembled to energize Washington's intuitive, spiritual meld are truly Herculean. Supported by Thundercat, keyboardists Cameron Graves and Brandon Coleman, trombones, trumpets and more, Washington, who also served as producer, worked a string section, a 20-voice choir and solo vocalist Patrice Quinn into his futuristic arrangements. Despite overdubbing by the project's six engineers, the sonic results are sleek and uncluttered. The diverse flavors here vary with each tune. Introduced by Coleman's organ, "Final Thought" mixes funk and post-bop with Washington's nimble honking. The swing rhythms and wordless vocal choir of "The Next Step" show the results of his time with innovative big band leader Gerald Wilson. Unadulterated fun is the object of the 70's funk groove, "Re Run Home." For those who doubt his connection to music history there's the one-two punch of the standard "Cherokee" and his soaring re-imagining of a movement of Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune." While one can quibble that perhaps three discs is too much of a good thing, it's clear from the assured first notes of the aptly-titled opener "Change of the Guard" that Washington is a musical mystic who's fused his wisdoms and exposures into a debut that's not a product of the insular jazz bubble, nor an au courant hip hop-jazz mashup, but three hours that somehow sound old and new in the same moment—a virtuosic musical statement, one constantly verging on genius. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

The Third World is the initial session that mixed Gato Barbieri's free jazz tenor playing with Latin and Brazilian influences. It's also the album that brought Barbieri positive attention from the college crowds of the late '60s. He would expand on this musical combination with his next few Flying Dutchman releases as well as his first recordings for the Impulse! label. The records made between 1969 through 1974 find Barbieri creating a danceable yet fiery combination of South American rhythms and free jazz forcefulness. Strangely, once Barbieri signed with A&M, he began making commercial records geared to fans of Herb Alpert, sounding nothing like his earlier albums. © Al Campbell /TiVo

Another fine Webster release on Verve that sees the tenor great once again backed by the deluxe Oscar Peterson Trio. In keeping with the high standard of their Soulville collaboration of two years prior, Webster and the trio -- Peterson is joined by bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen -- use this 1959 date to conduct a clinic in ballad playing. And while Soulville certainly ranks as one of the tenor saxophonist's best discs, the Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson set gets even higher marks for its almost transcendent marriage of after-hours elegance and effortless mid-tempo swing -- none of Webster's boogie-woogie piano work to break up the mood here. Besides reinvigorating such lithe strollers as "Bye Bye Blackbird" (nice bass work by Brown here) and "This Can't Be Love," Webster and company achieve classic status for their interpretation of the Sinatra gem "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning." And to reassure Peterson fans worried about scant solo time for their hero, the pianist lays down a healthy number of extended runs, unobtrusively shadowing Webster's vaporous tone and supple phrasing along the way. Not only a definite first-disc choice for Webster newcomers, but one of the jazz legend's all-time great records. © Stephen Cook /TiVo

This album came about through a fortuitous convergence of circumstances. Shelly Manne & His Men were appearing at New York's Village Vanguard, sharing the bill with the Bill Evans Trio. Getting Riverside's permission to let the pianist participate, Creed Taylor set up a session at Rudy Van Gelder's studio with Evans and Manne sharing top billing. Manne's bass player, Monty Budwig, made up the trio. This was a busman's holiday for Evans, who was freed from the musical parameters he had set for his then-current trio. The result is that his playing seemed lighter, freer, and more relaxed than it had for a while. The album kicks off with a jaunty version of Irving Berlin's "The Washington Twist" from the unsuccessful Mr. President, with Budwig sharing the honors with Evans as much as Manne. Manne spends most of his time driving Evans into more diminished and sharper playing than was usually Evans' wont. Another relatively unfamiliar Berlin work, "Let's Go Back to the Waltz," gives full reign to Evans' lyricism. The longest tune on the set is an audacious, almost lampooned version of "With a Song in My Heart" with light chordal phrasing that pretty much characterized much of the tone coming from this session. Listening to these three, it's clear that everyone was having a good time and simply enjoying being relieved of their duties with their regular combos, even if for just one day. © Dave Nathan /TiVo