Just

Billy Hart, Ethan Iverson, Mark Turner, Ben Street

CD18,90 coming soon
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After twenty years of playing together, the Billy Hart Quartet – with Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson and Ben Street – is distinguished by its stylistic openness.  “If ever there was an example of contemporary jazz that draws extensively on all the ‘traditions’ while infusing some of the melodic clarity associated with the more challenging end of popular song, then this is it,” wrote critic Kevin Le Gendre  of the quartet’s previous ECM album One Is The Other. A drummer of enormous experience, who has played through many of jazz’s idiomatic upheavals, Hart, now 83, advocates a ‘multi-directional’ sound approach, and his younger confrères respond accordingly, each piece subtly opening another door.  On Just,  Ethan Iverson contributes four compositions, ranging from the sly, floating “Chamber Music” to the eruptively motoric “Aviation”.  Mark Turner and Hart himself bring three tunes apiece.  Hart’s include updates of two of his well-known tunes, “Layla Joy” and “Naaj”, while among Turner’s pieces is “Billy’s Waltz”, both a graceful dance and a vehicle for blues-conscious expression, and the uptempo vamp “Top of the Middle”.  Just was recorded in New York’s Sound On Sound Studios  in December 2021, and mixed in Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in September 2023.
Nach zwanzig Jahren des gemeinsamen Musizierens zeichnet sich das Billy Hart Quartett – mit Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson und Ben Street – durch seine stilistische Offenheit aus.  "Wenn es jemals ein Beispiel für zeitgenössischen Jazz gab, der sich ausgiebig auf alle 'Traditionen' stützt und gleichzeitig etwas von der melodischen Klarheit einfließen lässt, die mit dem anspruchsvolleren Repertoire des American Songbooks verbunden ist, dann ist es dieses", schrieb der Kritiker Kevin Le Gendre über das letzte ECM-Album One Is The Other des Quartetts. Als Schlagzeuger mit enormer Erfahrung, der viele idiomatische Umbrüche des Jazz mitgemacht hat, vertritt der heute 83-jährige Hart einen "multidirektionalen" Soundansatz, und seine jüngeren Mitstreiter reagieren entsprechend, wobei jedes Stück subtil eine andere Tür öffnet.  Auf Just steuert Ethan Iverson vier Kompositionen bei, vom verschmitzt-schwebenden "Chamber Music" bis zum eruptiv-motorischen "Aviation". Von Mark Turner und Hart selbst kommen jeweils drei Kompositionen. Zu Harts Stücken gehören neuartige Interpretationen seiner zwei bekannten Nummern "Layla Joy" und "Naaj", während Turner "Billy's Waltz" – sowohl ein anmutiger Tanz als auch ein Vehikel für bluesbewussten Ausdruck – und den Uptempo-Vamp "Top of the Middle" im Gepäck hat.  Just wurde im Dezember 2021 in den New Yorker Sound On Sound Studios aufgenommen und im September 2023 in den Studios La Buissonne in Südfrankreich abgemischt.
Featured Artists Recorded

December 2021, Sound On Sound Recording Inc, New York

Original Release Date

28.02.2025

  • 1Showdown
    (Ethan Iverson)
    05:25
  • 2Layla Joy
    (Billy Hart)
    05:58
  • 3Aviation
    (Ethan Iverson)
    04:39
  • 4Chamber Music
    (Ethan Iverson)
    05:01
  • 5South Hampton
    (Ethan Iverson)
    07:04
  • 6Just
    (Billy Hart)
    03:54
  • 7Billy's Waltz
    (Mark Turner)
    07:21
  • 8Bo Brussels
    (Mark Turner)
    04:48
  • 9Naaj
    (Billy Hart)
    04:47
  • 10Top of the Middle
    (Mark Turner)
    07:45
After twenty-plus years of shared activity, the Billy Hart Quartet – with Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson and Ben Street – is still distinguished by its stylistic openness, a consequence of setting out to embrace all the things that drummer-leader Hart likes to play. “If ever there was an example of contemporary jazz that draws extensively on all the ‘traditions’ while infusing some of the melodic clarity associated with the more challenging end of popular song, then this is it,” wrote Kevin Le Gendre in Jazzwise of the quartet’s album One Is The Other. A drummer of enormous experience, who has played through many of jazz’s idiomatic upheavals, Billy Hart, now 84, favours a ‘multi-directional’ sound approach, and his younger confrères respond accordingly, each piece subtly opening another door. The quartet is an alliance of four highly individual improvisers. As pianist Ethan Iverson has noted: “A jazz group is a sensitive mechanism. You’ve got to play together and listen hard, but there’s also a way you need to stay your own course.”
 
It helps that the group has three strong writers in Iverson, Turner and Hart himself.  Iverson contributes four contrasting compositions to Just: the sly, floating “Chamber Music”, the eruptively motoric “Aviation”, the abstract blues “South Hampton”, and the pretty, lilting “Showdown.”
 
Mark Turner and Hart himself each bring three tunes. Turner’s pieces are “Billy’s Waltz”, both a graceful dance and a vehicle for blues-conscious swing, the up-tempo vamp “Top of the Middle”, and the freely expressive “Bo Brussels” with a theme that continues to unwind in unexpected ways. Hart’s contributions include updates of two of his well-known tunes, “Layla-Joy” and “Naaj”, both returned to on multiple occasions in his long career, and the title piece, whose emphatic beat may trigger memories of the days when Billy was the driving force in Herbie Hancock’s band, or Eddie Harris’s. In this group, older pieces are made new. The present take of “Layla-Joy” opens with Mark Turner phrasing like Coltrane in ballad mode, before the tender melody is splintered and the group moves into spacious and exploratory group improvising.
 
In an interview with Jazz Times, in the early days of the BHQ, Hart said of his colleagues: “They’re brilliant contemporary conceptualists. Playing my older tunes, I’m not playing any freer with anybody than I play with them. Mark profoundly understands Coltrane, but also has total command of Lennie Tristano’s vocabulary. With Ethan, it’s like playing with Thelonious Monk or Andrew Hill one minute and Herbie Hancock the next.” It has remained a forward-looking group thoroughly grounded in the music’s history.
  
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Billy Hart first appeared on ECM half a century ago, on Bennie Maupin’s classic The Jewel In  The Lotus in 1974, returning in the 1990s as Charles Lloyd’s drummer of choice to play on The Call, Canto, All My Relations and Lift Every Voice.  The Billy Hart Quartet with Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson and Ben Street was formed in 2003 and, after a debut album issued on the High Note label in 2006, came to ECM for All Our Reasons in 2012, which also marked first appearances at the label for Ethan Iverson and Ben Street.  In addition to the BHQ work, Turner and Iverson collaborated on the duo album Temporary Kings (2018), and Billy Hart and Ben Street reappeared as rhythm section for Aaron Parks on Find The Way (2017).  
 
Saxophonist Mark Turner has recorded also as a leader for ECM, his discography including Lathe of Heaven (2014), and Return from the Stars (2022), as well as albums with the cooperative trio Fly (Sky and Country and Year of the Snake). Bassist Ben Street’s credits include work with the quartet of another veteran drum innovator, Andrew Cyrille (on The Declaration of Musical Independence and The News). Street was also featured as part of the Ethan Iverson Quartet on the live album Common Practice (2019).
 
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Just was recorded in New York’s Sound On Sound Studios in December 2021.
 
For further information: Billy Hart, Drummer :: Official Website and www.ecmrecords.com