Solo Duo & Trio
Randy Weston's distinctive compositions and pianism have long mined the music's African sources to enrich the idiom. This CD presents Weston at the very beginnings of his recording career, combining his first two LPs. The earliest is a selection of eightCole Portertunes from 1954, played in duet with his regular partner, Sam Gill, a little-known bassist who provides solid and sympathetic foundations. The second combines a 1955 trio session, with Gill andArt Blakeyon drums, and a series of solos from 1956. The most creative members of Weston's generation were strongly influenced byThelonious Monk, and none more so than Weston. It was a thoroughly positive influence, though, and Weston was beginning to shape it into his own distinctive approach. It leads to the deliberated harmonic explorations and the acute sense of rhythmic displacement that he employs in probing the standards here, rethinking them at their structural core and adding thoughtfully placed splashes of often dissonant keyboard color. The trio blues "Zulu" is already a sign of Weston's later-developed interests in polyrhythms, and it shows a striking kinship with another great pianist of the time,Herbie Nichols.--Stuart Broomer