Early Black Friday Books Deal - Grab $15 off $75+. Use EARLYREAD15 before Nov 16!Get Your $15 Off Today
Hey, first-timer? Here’s $10 off your first splash! Learn more.✕
Your first order deserves a treat! 🎁 Save $10 when you spend $50. use code WELCOME10 before Dec 31.
Nightlife *
By
Rating
Product Description
Product Details
Performer Notes
Personnel: Ernestine Anderson (vocals); Houston Person (tenor saxophone); Lafayette Harris, Jr. (piano); Jerome Jennings, Willie Jones III (drums).
Audio Mixer: Katherine Miller.
Liner Note Author: Michael Bourne.
Recording information: Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola Jazz, Lincoln Center (04/04/2008-04/10/2010).
Photographers: Alan Nahigian; R. Andrew Lepley.
After the triumph that was 2008's A Song for You, Ernestine Anderson returns with a live collection compiled from three dates at Dizzy's Club Coca Cola and Jazz at Lincoln Center, recorded between that year and 2010. The mix is a healthy helping of jazz and swinging blues with a top-shelf band. The constants are saxophonist Houston Person, and pianist Lafayette Harris, Jr., with new drummer Jerome Jennings (Willie Jones III plays on the stellar "All Blues"), and alternating bassists Lonnie Plaxico and Chip Jackson. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this date is that Anderson, who was 80 at the time of the earliest of these recordings, is captured at her dusky, sultry, swinging best. It's there in the fingerpopping "I Love Being Here with You," the deeply emotive title track (a fine showcase for Harris), the shimmering backbeat groove in "Only Trust Your Heart," and the jaunty reading of "Falling in Love with Love"-- where she meets meets Person in a call-and-response interchange that is delightful. Anderson lets her deep well of experience, phrasing, and expression compensate handsomely for what age has taken from her range. This set doesn't have the sense of controlled elegance that A Song for You did, but it isn't supposed to. It's a party record, a collection of jazz tunes done with pure blues feeling by an artist who obviously relishes engaging with her band in front of an audience. ~ Thom Jurek
Professional Reviews
Down Beat (p.60) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "Just when you think she'll let intonation, fidelity to songs or sloppy phrasing get too far out of hand, she'll pull a string of blues stanzas out of the air on a brisk tempo and it's she's quite in control."
JazzTimes (p.72) - "[I]t simply serves as testament that the lady has lost none of her sass, wit or verve."
