Andrew Hill - Solos: The Jazz Sessions

Andrew Hill - Solos: The Jazz Sessions by Andrew Hill. For Piano. Live/DVD. DVD. MVD #MVD5047D. Published by MVD.

The Jazz Sessions series spotlights unaccompanied performances by some of the legends and bright young stars of the jazz world. Designed and recorded specifically for television, this Solos DVD offers viewers front row seats for an intimate and unique jazz experience. Each program features complete musical pieces, insightful interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. Shot in stunning HDTV with multiple moving cameras and a medley of elegant cinematic lighting, it showcases an exciting and dynamic variety of jazz styles – from the blues and boogie-woogie to bebop and the experimental.

While many of pianist and composer Andrew Hill's contemporaries were totally jettisoning the rhythmic and harmonic techniques of bop and hard bop, Hill worked to extend their possibilities. His was a revolution from within. – he exhibited a determined command of his materials, however abstract they might sometimes be. His composed melodies were labyrinthine, rhythmically and harmonically complex tunes that exhibit a sophistication born of mastery, not chance or contingency. As a pianist, Hill had a flowing melodicism and an elastic sense of time. Like his composing, Hill's playing had an ever-present air of spontaneity and was almost completely devoid of cliché. Performances include: East 19th Street • Bent Forward • Unsmooth • Tough Love. 50 minutes.