Jazz at the Plaza From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jazz at the Plaza by Released September 28, 1973 Recorded September 9, 1958 at the Persian Room, , Length 41:02 chronology
(1973) Jazz at the Plaza
(1973)
(1974)

Jazz at the Plaza is a live album by . It was recorded in 1958 and released in 1973 by .

Contents

Background

The album features the famed sextet that recorded six months later. The concert was recorded in 1958 but not released in full until 1973. The last three songs would reappear (in reverse order) in 1974, on , but on Jazz at the Plaza all the tracks are of much better sound quality. The musicians did not know they were being recorded at the time. The event was a party thrown by Columbia to celebrate the healthy state of their jazz division. Indeed it was not meant to be a record session: "it was a party. We taped it because we wanted to remember it, in case it never happened again." Pianist later stated the musicians who were still alive at the time of release were offered payment at the 1958 scale.

"", which had become a staple in the sextet's play book, is played by Davis in his new style. On "", he plays the faster than usual and alternates the groove between full and , while Bill Evans quotes "" in his own solo.

Critical reception

's Thom Jurek gave the album four out of five stars and felt that, despite Sony's remastering, it "succeeds mightily on the level" of a "remarkable" band's "fine performance". He recommended it strictly to jazz listeners as a "curiosity piece" because of its "dodgy" and "dubious sound quality." In its four-star review of the album, magazine found the music "engaging" and stated, "The intrigue from the redefined here has everything to do with Davis' elliptical and seeming impatience with the latter-day offspring of ".

Track listing "" – 8:31 "" – 10:39 "" – 10:19 " – 10:56 including "The Theme" [unlisted] Personnel – trumpet – tenor sax – alto sax – piano – bass – drums References "Review: Jazz at the Plaza". (Chicago): 59. September 2001. Original liner notes by Irving Townsend Pettinger, Peter (1998). . Yale University Press. p. 60.  . Jurek, Thom. . . Retrieved June 9, 2013.