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Concert Sun Mar 22 2009
"The Finest in Jazz since 1939".
Blue Note Records. To the general public, that name means jazz. Along with Impulse Records ("The House that Trane Built") and some others, their catalog and distinctive style in the jazz heyday from the 40s to 60s has persevered to the present day.
This year, they celebrate their 70th anniversary as a label with a tour and retrospective. Friday night, at Symphony Center, the Blue Note 7, a collection of artists, ran through a number of representative pieces that have been recorded in Blue Note's history.
Most anyone can tell you something about Miles or Trane, who both recorded for Blue Note at some point in their careers, but the legacy of Blue Note lies in the strong compositional minds who called the label home. Minds like Wayne Shorter and Horace Silver exemplified not only mastery of their instruments, but new ways to bring out new sounds via different arrangements, and still do so to this day.
This was not a night for shining a spotlight on Blue Note's A-listers. This was a night for pieces representative of the efforts of the label to stay crent and advance the jazz form. Grant Green's "Idle Moments" was the lone "slower" selection; the rest of the compositions were faster, more involved, and more bop-oriented. Lee Morgan's "Party Time" rocked and rolled. The uptempo work of vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, drummer and leader Art Blakey, and eccentric pianist and composerThelonious Monk rounded out a pretty good two hour retrospective and sample of the work of the venerable jazz label whom, in times like these, are wondering what they're going to do next.