Live at Birdland
Azica/AJD-72214
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- Holly Hofmann - flute
- Bill Cunliffe - piano
- Ray Brown - bass
- Victor Lewis - drums
Preview a song in it's entirety!
Click the highlighted track to play the music.
- Introductions
- Brown Bossa
- Mood Indigo
- Ray's Tales
- Soul Eyes
- Bohemia After Dark
- Luiza
- Driftin'
- In a Sentimental Mood
Review
Anita Carol Smith, Jazz News
W
hat comes to mind when you think “flute”? Mozart? Ballet? Afternoon of a Faun?
In the jazz world, the flute shucks its toeshoes and claims its membership in the horn
family. If you haven't met this instrument in its jazz clothes, flutist Holly Hofmann's new CD
Live at Birdland is the perfect introduction.
Here the flute shouts like a trumpet and croons like Sarah Vaughan. It growls. It ca- resses. It struts through classics, and, just when you think you know where it's going, it flips a tune upside down and sideways.
The track Ray's tales reveals the core identity of the Holly Hofmann Quartet. The tune swings, with tight collaboration between Hofmann/ legendary bassist Ray Brown, pianist Bill Cunliffe, and drummer Victor Lewis. Fittingly, Brown, the "Ray" of Ray's Tales, opens the piece with his characteristic clean attack and subtle phrasing. He's joined by Hofmann and Lewis in tandem, releasing into a full-on Hofmann solo. This is Hofmann's signature style: improvising on the melody with impeccable timing and facility. Then Cunliffe deftly picks up the catchy melody in an extended trio with Brown and Lewis. All this leads to a rousing four-way blend that takes the tune home. This track could be marketed as a "how to" for structuring a jazz tune.
On the lyrical and exquisite Soul Eyes you may ask: Is Hofmann the same flute player who could hammer our the notes of the previous track? Longtime collaboration between Cunliffe and Hofmann, complemented by a light touch from Lewis and Brown, pays off here in a sleek musical conversion.
Duke Ellington's timeless Mood Indigo is a gauge for any jazz CD on which it appears. The Hofmann Quartet has the savvy to note that the power of this song lies in its subtlety. The quartet's understated version seduces, insists, persuades - and lands right on the money. A Ray Brown bass interlude luxuriously savors the melody. Some saucy flute improv tops off this dish served with style.
This CD is an intergenerational phenomenon. Bassist Ray Brown is one of the music's most established statesmen. He first gigged with Dizzy Gillespie over half a century ago. Later, Holly Hofmann, as a child jazz prodigy studied one of Brown's LPs over and over as part of her apprenticeship into the jazz world. Now Hofmann joins her childhood idol as an internationally acclaimed performer in her own right. She shows the varied colors of the flute as a rightful member of the jazz family.
