Conrad Herwig

Conrad Herwig - "Sketches of Spain Y Mas: The Latin Side of Miles Davis"

Steven A. Cerra
I try to keep the topics for the blog postings somewhat spontaneous.  All of them require a certain amount of technical planning for obvious reasons and some involve lengthy research, but sometimes while perusing my music collection I come across something that I haven’t listen to in a while and this provides a subject or a theme that forms the basis for the next blog feature.

Book reviews, CD reviews, concert coverage, re-publications, in-depth profiles of favorite Jazz musicians, interviews - all have found their way onto these pages - but I must admit that there’s nothing quite as satisfying as an impromptu rendezvous with a favorite piece of music that I can turn into a video to accompany a brief posting about “recent listening.” 

Perhaps it is the improvisational nature of the process of discovery that relates to how Jazz is made that intrigues me.

Whatever the case, I’ve been a big fan of trombonist Conrad Herwig’s “Latin Side of” recordings for many years. It is great fun to listen to the compositions of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, among others, in a Latin Jazz setting.

Must be the drummer in me.

The idea for the video that concludes this piece came to me while listening to Petits Machins the concluding track of Conrad’s Sketches of Spain Y Mas: The Latin Side of Miles Davis [Highnote 4530].

Petits Machins, which translates from the French as “Little Stuff,” more properly belong to the “Y Mas” portion of the CD as the original performance of the tune is on Miles’ Filles de Kilimanjaro.

Conrad’s version of Petits Machins highlights a “drum battle” between Robbie Ameen on drum kit and conguero Richie Flores.

Thematically, I decided on Netsuke to visualize the Little Stuff aspect of the music.

Netsuke are miniature sculptures that were invented in 17th-century Japan to serve a practical function (the two Japanese characters ne+tsuke mean "root" and "to attach"). Traditional Japanese garments — robes called kosode and kimono — had no pockets; however, men who wore them needed a place to store their personal belongings, such as pipes, tobacco, money, seals, or medicines.

Their solution was to place such objects in containers (called sagemono) hung by cords from the robes' sashes (obi). The containers may have been pouches or small woven baskets, but the most popular were beautifully crafted boxes (inrō), which were held shut by ojime, which were sliding beads on cords. Whatever the form of the container, the fastener that secured the cord at the top of the sash was a carved, button-like toggle called a netsuke.

Bill Milkowski, a regular contributor to Jazz Times and Jazziz magazines offers the following description of the context and the music that appears on Conrad’s nontet recording of Sketches of Spain Y Mas: The Latin Side of Miles Davis [Highnote 4530].

read more: http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com.br/2016/02/conrad-herwig-sketches-of-spain-y-mas.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+JazzProfiles+(Jazz+Profiles)