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Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

12K views 61 replies 22 participants last post by  Di 
#1 ·
Harry Allen was playing a duo gig with Italian pianist, Rossano Sportiello at Smalls last week. I listened to the gig on the smalls website and Harry Allen sounded so great. IMO he has one of the most beautiful tenor sounds out there today. Fortunately Michael Steinman of Jazz Lives blog was there to capture it and has posted some of the performances on youtube.

Check out that sound he makes on his balanced action!!!!

SOME OTHER SPRING


JUST YOU, JUST ME


BLUES


BUT BEAUTIFUL
 
#47 ·
Well, positive impact is what they'll remember when you're gone...but competitiveness is all that will keep you alive and relevant until then. I spent 18 years in New York, but I didn't have the stomach to keep up with the pace, so I got passed by. I only stayed on because I couldn't imagine it would be any better elsewhere.
 
#51 ·
If you can't balance music and life, you can get into deep trouble. And still make great music. It's not a humanistic pursuit.

$#!!, I wonder what Harry Allen would say about all this. I've met him, and he seems like a very modest and levelheaded guy, more like an engineer than a musician.
 
#52 ·
This stuff is fantastic. We need more players aspiring to this kind of thing. I mean I love Chris Potter's stuff, but this is great too and I don't think we should be telling all young people they need to play like Coltrane and Brecker and Potter or else their playing will be "dated" and "out of style". Harry Allen, this kind of thing......this is how saxophonists used to sound and play back when people actually LISTENED to jazz.
 
#53 ·
I always wonder what current players would sound like if they took their inspiration from different sources. What would a modern player with Chris Potter's talent sound like if they took their influence from Prez and Ben Webster rather than a Trane/Brecker style.
 
#56 ·
I guess something like this young and very talented guy from the UK (do you know him :bluewink:?):


or


I think he sounds better than Harry Allen.
 
#54 ·
All true. But have you seen the crowds "listenable" jazz pulls in? They're not hip and happening people anymore!

Do you know about the "Jazz Party Circuit"? Harry is well loved there along with a few dozen other straight-ahead, swing-to-bop players (Warren Vaché on trumpet, Dan Barrett, trombone, and Howard Alden, guitar come to mind).

Jazz Parties happen in the same locations annually (my hometown, Ames, IA, used to have one until one guy died and everybody else felt too old and tired to keep it going without him). There are many different locations, even aboard cruise ships, but the musicians all come from New York. Arbors and Concord are record labels that frequently feature them. It's all small-group standards. No one ever sits in. The audiences are pretty much the same few thousand folks every year, all affluent, all retired, all White.

The parties can't go on much longer - they're a thing of a generation, and even that generation didn't start doing them till middle-age. Now the scene is going to pass. Maybe good, because the style, set list, and especially personnel are very rigid - but maybe not so good, because nothing is going to replace them. The listenable style of jazz will lose the biggest part of its listeners.
 
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