IPO Recordings ....

These are some jaw-dropping duets by Eddie Daniels and Roger Kellaway recorded live at The Bakery in Los Angeles. Eddie and Roger have been collaborators on a number of projects over the years, including Eddie's Grammy-winning album, "Memos from Paradise." Their playing here is amazingly creative, completely spontaneous but together every step of the way, and a fascinating example of jazz collaboration at its very best. Paquito D'Rivera pays special tribute to Eddie in his liner notes for the release: "Eddie Daniels' use of articulation, tone quality, imagination, finesse, absolute control and exquisite technique makes him one of a kind. For my money, as a proud member of the elitist 'clarineters club' myself, I would dare to say that his enormous contribution to the almost extinct art of Jazz-clarineting is so significant, that now we can even talk about the instrument as BE and AE (Before Eddie and After Eddie)." Photography by the legendary William Claxton.

These selections were recorded during the 1990s and as late as 2002 by IPO's Bill Sorin, before hislabel came into being. They showcase pianist Sir Roland Hanna, the label's first artist, at the heightof his powers. Hanna's playing resonates with an authoritative, almost regal forcefulness yet it's also graceful. Despite his deft technique, he never sacrifices meaning for display, and there's a sense ofjoy and discovery at every turn—life-affirming melodic and harmonic richness, deep emotion withoutbathos. He begins Coltrane's "Naima" with a feel of coiled tension, which he then relieves by lesseningthe tautness of his focus, expanding from his initial narrow reading of the melody line into a broadenedelaboration on the theme. His "Lush Life" isn't the world-weary lament of a soul old before his time, buta meditation on the joy that Billy Strayhorn's careworn after-hours poet was seeking in his dissolution.The sparkling clarity of Hanna's treble work and the richness of his chording bring a feel of hard-wontranquility to a piece most interpreters mine for its romantic resignation.

Hanna brings a sly trickster's wit to his own "'Cello," a meditative line brightened by unexpected anglesand offshoots and enriched by an improvisation that one again radiates good humor with a regalpresence. "Blues" is just that: a retrospective, through-the-eras travelogue through the development ofthis venerable root source of jazz. Hanna brings to bear the full arsenal of his technical and imaginativegifts, yet his playing is infused with an emotional immediacy that cuts to the core of blues expression. Abalance of strength and soul this effective was remarkably rare, and makes Hanna's absence—he died in2002—all the more unfortunate. - JAZZ Times

One of the most recent albums of the Duke’s repertoire is by the wonderful pianist Roger Kellaway in duet with the clarinet master Eddie Daniels and it swings with gay abandon from start to finish.  

There are no secret ingredients here. Mr. Kellaway is one of the principal characters in this virtual operetta that is Live in Santa Fe. The pianist is, regrettably, not as well-known as a featured artist as he should be and his significant reputation rests upon a few recordings and the eager following of cognoscenti. But he deserves to be much better-known. His mastery of expression is something to be breathtakingly admired. Audiences have often become numb with delight and have been left gasping at the cut and thrust of his attack as his fingers flail across the ivories.

He dazzles equally with majestically executed arpeggios and fluttering runs as he does with sublime and half hidden harmonies. His phrases consist of gorgeously coloured notes played in fluttering triads and triplets as well as in wider spaced multicolored notes that carve the air in wider arcs. Melodies might pop up in spirited inversions or simply linear innovations awash with polytonal colours and textures.

Best of all, he has such a mastery of Duke Ellington’s repertoire that he has made it his own in a singular manner and created breathtaking new ideas which are barely hidden in the versions of Mr. Ellington’s songs that he plays. But he is never alone… The great Eddie Daniels is never very far behind; in fact he is not behind at all, but rather the pianist and the reeds and woodwinds player are entwined like the proverbial double-helix and with that musical DNA are able to create this wondrous music that would please the stellar cast of musicians who once made up the Duke Ellington Orchestra.  - Jazz Damage