like rain whispers mist

Live At The Jazz Standard Complete Book, December 5th through 10th, 2006

Dave Douglas - cornet
Donny McCaslin - tenor saxophone
Uri Caine - fender rhodes
James Genus - contrabass
Clarence Penn - drums


Total time: 708:33

Box sets are interesting beasts. They can serve a variety of purposes from presenting the entirety or a large portion of one's discography like the Mosaic Chu Berry set, compiling prime cuts from numerous sessions like the very well done Jimmy Smith and Grant Green Blue Note boxes, and numerous other ends and means. My favorite form of the box set though are those documenting live music in a succession of nights. Hearing music as performed, workshoped, and developed performance after performance. When tunes repeat, it's not like hearing an alternate take culled from a recording session attempting perfection. Instead, because the music is recorded in the moment, it responds to the moment in front of the public and the beautiful sounds that comes from the interaction.

From hearing Miles Davis' second quintet perform set after set at the Plugged Nickel, Chick Corea debuting his Origin sextet at the Blue Note, or the Vandermark 5 performing at Alchemia these are sets for lovers of jazz and improvisation. And with new technology comes new ways of presenting these types of sets to the public which brings us to Dave Douglas' Live At The Jazz Standard Complete Book. Some might consider this a live release and question as to how this can be a box set when there is no physical product, but it is the concept and presentation that makes me rank this as the best box set of 2007 (and besides, I cheated a little using box sets in my Historical rankings here).

Performing at the Standard December 5th through 10th of 2006, Douglas and his imprint Greenleaf Music took on the almost incomprehensible task of "recording, mastering, digitizing, [and upload] with artwork Dave's magnificent music, all within the stated 24 hour goal."


Not everything was perfect, the tagging of the music files was all over the place initially (hopefully better now), but the music is glorious throughout. Two sets a night over six nights featuring 79 total performances of 44 tunes culled from the albums The Infinite, Strange Liberation, Meaning and Mystery, along with new road tested pieces; the band is obviously on fire led by the dynamic and severely underrated Clarence Penn. And who can deny Uri Caine's glorious fender rhodes sound?

The knock against sets of music like this I see most often stems from the sheer amount of music and the occasional repetition of repertoire. Multiple tunes, multiple versions, multiple days. Unlike a singular album (even live) you don't have a definitive version of something necessarily recognized uniformly among the critics because the music is not presented in that fashion. But honestly, arguments like this hold little weight in my opinion. If one attends a concert and enjoys the band and wants to see them again, what is the difference in hearing them on record? Especially when the energy present in the flesh is so faithfully reproduced on your headphones? Additionally, with the modern means of creating iTunes (or other) playlists where you can hear tunes back to back so easily if one wants to really dig deep within a tune they can. Or simply let the set wash over you as it occurred.

The music is solid, I think everyone knows that easily enough. And if one needs to be convinced or is afraid of a digital only release such as this, check out the two disc compilation available in a brick and mortar store near you or online at Amazon et al. The two disc cd set is a great encapsulation of the group sound, but hearing set after set is what I desire and find myself listening to most often. And as the music business at large comes to terms with new economies such as this type of digital release (or David Binney's concert releases and even Saul Williams and Radiohead-esque free releases) it will be interesting to see if this set is a harbinger of things to come in getting the music in front of people straight from the clubs.

Either way, a great set of music. You can hear the box or a particular tune below by double clicking on a song title. You can visit Dave Douglas and Greenleaf here. Download the book here. He runs a great blog there as well, worth subscribing too.

Do the sounds sound good to you?

Labels: Listening Session, Musicians A - G