Mal Waldron: Searching In Grenoble: The 1978 Solo Piano Concert

  Mal Waldron is one of my favorite pianists. In the first part of his career, he was the “house pianist” for Prestige from 1956-1958 and accompanied Billie Holiday from April 1957 until her death in 1959. After a mental breakdown in 1963, Waldron slowly reacquainted himself with the piano, developing a different style with a more obsessive focus than he’d displayed in the Fifties. Perhaps making up for lost time, he proceeded to record prolifically starting in the late Sixties, as a solo pianist, as a bandleader, and frequently with soprano saxophone specialist Steve Lacy. I had the good fortune to be around Keystone Korner in the late Seventies, and one of my fondest memories of that time is a magnificently transfixing hour solo by Waldron as part of an evening of solo and trio performances by Waldron and Jaki Byard. To say that I’m thrilled to welcome Searching In Grenoble: The 1978 Solo Piano Concert into my record library is to state the obvious. Waldron is in top form, and the quality of the tapes, professionally recorded by the French INA (Institut national de l'audiovisuel). is superb. Waldron starts out with a vigorous 23-minute medley of his original compositions Mistral Breeze and Sieg Haile. For the rest of this beautifully paced program, Waldron performs a few standards and looks back to the Fifties with explorations of his well-known compositions like Fire Waltz, All Alone, and Soul Eyes. Also on offer are newer pieces like Snake Out (first recorded in 1973) and Russian Melody (1974), plus two other previously unrecorded originals, Here, There and Everywhere and Petite Gémeaux. This Tompkins Square release is yet another production of the apparently indefatigable Zev Feldman. The booklet, well-illustrated as usual with his projects, includes remarks from the pianist’s daughter Mala Waldron, Parisian journalist Pascal Rozat on the Grenoble jazz scene, and liner notes on the music by Adam Schatz. Best of all are the brief interviews Feldman conducted with two pianists of different generations, Ran Blake and Matthew Shipp. Blake first heard Waldron when he has “a waiter at the Jazz Gallery and every night for six weeks, [and] we heard Straight Ahead and the Freedom Now Suite” by Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln. Blake later studied briefly with him. What he wants the world to remember about Waldron is his “great kindness. And his brilliance.” Matthew Shipp, who says “I just love his overall sound world,” also makes note of the “very spiritual, full, Black sound in his playing.” Adam Shatz appraises this recording as “jazz, and art music, of the highest order.” I couldn’t agree more. Absolutely recommended. 

Tompkins Square TSQ5906 (cd, vinyl); Mal Waldron (p); Grenoble, France, March 23, 1978; Disc 1 (65:34): Medley: Mistral Breeze; Sieg Haile/ Here, There and Everywhere/ Russian Melody/ Petite Gémeaux/ Fire Waltz/ You Don’t Know What Love Is/ Soul Eyes. Disc 2 (37:50): It Could Happen to You/ Russian Melody/ I Thought About You/ Snake Out/ All Alone. www.tompkinssquare.com