(ecm, post-bop) John Abercrombie Quartet - Within A Song - 2012, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 2 from 29. April 2011
EAC extraction logfile from 23. May 2012, 21:46
John Abercrombie Quartet / Within a Song
Used drive  : PLEXTOR DVDR   PX-L890SA   Adapter: 2  ID: 1
Read mode               : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache      : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction                      : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks   : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations       : Yes
Used interface                              : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling                                : Appended to previous track
Used output format              : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate                : 256 kBit/s
Quality                         : High
Add ID3 tag                     : No
Command line compressor         : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXE
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "ALBUM ARTIST=%albumartist%
TOC of the extracted CD
     Track |   Start  |  Length  | Start sector | End sector
    ---------------------------------------------------------
        1  |  0:00.00 |  5:54.60 |         0    |    26609
        2  |  5:54.60 |  6:37.58 |     26610    |    56442
        3  | 12:32.43 |  7:55.41 |     56443    |    92108
        4  | 20:28.09 |  6:34.03 |     92109    |   121661
        5  | 27:02.12 |  5:57.47 |    121662    |   148483
        6  | 32:59.59 |  6:11.74 |    148484    |   176382
        7  | 39:11.58 |  9:12.20 |    176383    |   217802
        8  | 48:24.03 |  6:26.10 |    217803    |   246762
        9  | 54:50.13 |  6:25.04 |    246763    |   275641
Track  1
     Filename F:\Flac Rips\01 - Where Are You.wav
     Pre-gap length  0:00:02.00
     Peak level 60.7 %
     Extraction speed 3.9 X
     Track quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC 082979FB
     Copy CRC 082979FB
     Track not present in AccurateRip database
     Copy OK
Track  2
     Filename F:\Flac Rips\02 - Easy Reader.wav
     Pre-gap length  0:00:05.30
     Peak level 68.2 %
     Extraction speed 4.6 X
     Track quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC 18411572
     Copy CRC 18411572
     Track not present in AccurateRip database
     Copy OK
Track  3
     Filename F:\Flac Rips\03 - Within a Song-Without a Song.wav
     Pre-gap length  0:00:03.25
     Peak level 88.5 %
     Extraction speed 5.3 X
     Track quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC CF6325C1
     Copy CRC CF6325C1
     Track not present in AccurateRip database
     Copy OK
Track  4
     Filename F:\Flac Rips\04 - Flamenco Sketches.wav
     Peak level 73.9 %
     Extraction speed 4.9 X
     Track quality 99.9 %
     Test CRC 56FA98C3
     Copy CRC 56FA98C3
     Track not present in AccurateRip database
     Copy OK
Track  5
     Filename F:\Flac Rips\05 - Nick of Time.wav
     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.00
     Peak level 97.6 %
     Extraction speed 6.1 X
     Track quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC 836F5FC7
     Copy CRC 836F5FC7
     Track not present in AccurateRip database
     Copy OK
Track  6
     Filename F:\Flac Rips\06 - Blues Connotation.wav
     Pre-gap length  0:00:02.50
     Peak level 98.1 %
     Extraction speed 6.4 X
     Track quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC E7DBCC0F
     Copy CRC E7DBCC0F
     Track not present in AccurateRip database
     Copy OK
Track  7
     Filename F:\Flac Rips\07 - Wise One.wav
     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.50
     Peak level 85.9 %
     Extraction speed 7.1 X
     Track quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC E729EBF4
     Copy CRC E729EBF4
     Track not present in AccurateRip database
     Copy OK
Track  8
     Filename F:\Flac Rips\08 - Interplay.wav
     Pre-gap length  0:00:02.08
     Peak level 97.6 %
     Extraction speed 7.3 X
     Track quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC D97B4A48
     Copy CRC D97B4A48
     Track not present in AccurateRip database
     Copy OK
Track  9
     Filename F:\Flac Rips\09 - Sometime Ago.wav
     Pre-gap length  0:00:01.72
     Peak level 83.8 %
     Extraction speed 7.7 X
     Track quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC D12B4570
     Copy CRC D12B4570
     Track not present in AccurateRip database
     Copy OK
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
No errors occurred
End of status report
==== Log checksum 02035553A305166A572287E26D444D569E76B206948F454DF71C093002CEF5AF ====

REM GENRE Jazz
REM DATE 2012
REM DISCID 740E5B09
REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v1.0b2"
PERFORMER "John Abercrombie Quartet"
TITLE "Within a Song"
FILE "01 - Where Are You.wav" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Where Are You"
    PERFORMER "John Abercrombie Quartet"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Easy Reader"
    PERFORMER "John Abercrombie Quartet"
    INDEX 00 05:49:30
FILE "02 - Easy Reader.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "Within a Song-Without a Song"
    PERFORMER "John Abercrombie Quartet"
    INDEX 00 06:34:33
FILE "03 - Within a Song-Without a Song.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "04 - Flamenco Sketches.wav" WAVE
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE "Flamenco Sketches"
    PERFORMER "John Abercrombie Quartet"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    TITLE "Nick of Time"
    PERFORMER "John Abercrombie Quartet"
    INDEX 00 06:33:03
FILE "05 - Nick of Time.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    TITLE "Blues Connotation"
    PERFORMER "John Abercrombie Quartet"
    INDEX 00 05:54:72
FILE "06 - Blues Connotation.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    TITLE "Wise One"
    PERFORMER "John Abercrombie Quartet"
    INDEX 00 06:10:24
FILE "07 - Wise One.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    TITLE "Interplay"
    PERFORMER "John Abercrombie Quartet"
    INDEX 00 09:10:12
FILE "08 - Interplay.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 09 AUDIO
    TITLE "Sometime Ago"
    PERFORMER "John Abercrombie Quartet"
    INDEX 00 06:24:13
FILE "09 - Sometime Ago.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00

Fromhttp://www.ecmrecords.com/:
“Within A Song” celebrates the spirit of discovery that illuminated the jazz of the 1960s, as John Abercrombie declares his musical loyalties in a quartet album that pays tribute to a range of early influences including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall. “This was the music that spoke to me. When I heard it, it was like finding a new home.” The group assembled especially for this production, recorded at New York’s Avatar Studios in September 2011 features tenorist Joe Lovano as the optimal partner for Abercrombie. Together they mine deep feelings from these modern jazz classics.
Project:
On “Within A Song”, John Abercrombie pays tribute to formative influences, to the recordings and the musicians that shaped his early listening and his future directions. The period addressed is the 1960s, with specific reference to key recordings by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Bill Evans. This new album, revisiting some classics of the era, is effectively a modern jazz primer, but it’s also much more.
“Manfred Eicher and I had been talking for a while about doing an album that might pay homage to a particular jazz artist or composer. But in the end I preferred to look at the era when my own musical tastes were shaped. The recordings that I was listening to back then were mostly post-bebop jazz albums, usually by artists who were stretching the forms, in their various ways.”
Guitarist Abercrombie and tenorist Joe Lovano convey their empathy with the original protagonists, while also bringing much of their own creativity into service. There is superlative playing from both of them, with encouragement and alert support from Joey Baron and Drew Gress, also vital contributors to the project.
The album opens with “Where Are You”, from Rollins’ “The Bridge”, and from the same source comes “Without A Song”, the latter now enveloped in John’s title track. “Hearing Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall on ‘The Bridge’ was an epiphany for me,” Abercrombie says. “They just turned my head around. When I heard them playing ‘Without A Song’", I thought that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard! So for this new album I wrote songs based upon it.”
Jim Hall has long been one of John’s primary influences, admired for musicality and harmonic sophistication beyond the creation of great solos, and there are several Hall references on the disc, in connections to Rollins, Bill Evans and also Art Farmer. “I had the opportunity to see Art Farmer’s band with Jim Hall, Steve Swallow on acoustic bass and Pete La Roca on drums quite often, and every time I saw them they played Sergio Mahanovich’s tune ‘Sometime Ago’ in such a poignant way. It was so moving. In my mind, at least, it was the theme song of the Art Farmer-Jim Hall Quartet.” Hall was also on board for Bill Evans’s ‘Interplay’ album whose title tune is reinterpreted here. “I always liked this tune of Bill’s. It’s a very well-written theme on a minor blues. The construction of the melody, and Bill’s use of intervals, is quite unique. Plus, I welcomed the chance to play a blues on an ECM album.”
Ornette Coleman’s “Blues Connotation”, originally recorded on “This Is Our Music”, plays more loosely with the language of the blues. “I liked the total sound of Ornette’s bands with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and either Ed Blackwell or Billy Higgins. It was clear to me that Ornette had a concept and knew what he was doing. I heard his alto playing really as an extension of Charlie Parker. Having recorded ‘Round Trip’ already in the quartet with Mark Feldman [on ‘The Third Quartet’ in 2006], I was looking for another piece with that feeling of openness. ‘Blues Connotation’ has that quality. It’s a piece that gives you the option of playing in a blues style or freely, and this time we took a freer path.”
Abercrombie describes himself as “a late bloomer” vis-à-vis “Kind of Blue”: “It was released in ’59 but I didn’t hear it until 1962, when I was a student in Boston. I was completely captured by Miles’s playing on that album, the simplicity and beauty of it. Of course, the album is meanwhile so well-known that certain tunes have been practically worn out with repetition. But I thought it was still possible to play something fresh on the chord progressions of ‘Flamenco Sketches’ and create our own melodies.”
Coltrane’s “Crescent”, was also the subject of intense scrutiny in Abercrombie’s Boston years. “I had loved the way Coltrane played ballads, but ‘Crescent’ seemed to be a centrepiece for the new music he was working on: the new tunes, with the long rubato intros, of which ‘Wise One’ was a great example. Music of real beauty.”
Abercrombie also adds compositions of his own to the programme. “Easy Reader”, an amiable Abercrombie waltz, makes a nod to Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda’s “Easy Rider”, another iconic production of 60s vintage. This like “Nick Of Time” with its oblique melody, is integrated within the context of an album that looks back with admiration – and a measure of nostalgia – for an era when jazz was in the throes of great changes. “A celebration”, John says, “of an era when the musicians were stretching the forms”.
“Within A Song” was produced by Manfred Eicher at New York’s Avatar Studios in September 2011.
*** Review fromhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/:
John Abercrombie Quartet: Within a Song – review
(ECM)
★ ★ ★ ★
John Fordham
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 May 2012 22.42 BST
This is an unusual ECM release – a journey back to guitarist's guitarist John Abercrombie's formative 1960s influences, in the music of Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and Bill Evans. But the implications of the title, and a glance at a postbop superband lineup – saxophonist Joe Lovano, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Joey Baron complete the group – are the clues to its underlying contemporary strengths. Flamenco Sketches, from the Davis/Evans collaboration on Kind of Blue, joins sparing guitar and delicious tenor-sax tentativeness from Lovano. Coleman's Blues Connotation is a snappy, postbop twister that grows rhythmically more devious, Coltrane's Wise One showcases Abercrombie and Lovano's patient narrative-building and sensuous tone, and Evans' Interplay is a cool-school weave that gets raunchier in Lovano's solo. The atmosphere is delicate (Baron, at times, seems barely to be touching his cymbals), but there's a great deal more exuberant swing than on recent Abercrombie sessions – and this all-star group constantly demonstrate how joyous that can sound without winding up the volume.