Pianist #AndrewHill

Pianist #AndrewHill was a visionary who recorded for Blue Note over a span of 40+ years https://t.co/Y0dA3QIUx0 pic.twitter.com/CcFruHjUbH

— Blue Note Records (@bluenoterecords) August 23, 2016

Andrew Hill On Piano Jazz

March 21, 2014 1:00 PM
Photo: Jimmy Katz/Courtesy of the artist
Fifty years ago today, Andrew Hill recorded what would become his signature album: Point of Departure. Fifty years later, it still sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday. Assembling a murderer's row of horn players (Eric Dolphy, Kenny Dorham, Joe Henderson) with a rhythm section for the ages (Hill, Richard Davis, Tony Williams), Hill juxtaposed complex, layered harmonies with charged grooves. The result occupies that rare territory between the comfort of the familiar and the allure of the perceptibly unique.

Point of Departure is but the best-known of many works that made the late Andrew Hill a hero to many pianists and composers. This 2005 episode of Piano Jazz finds Hill, during a welcome late-career rush of attention, opening up to Marian McPartland. — Patrick Jarenwattananon, A Blog Supreme

Andrew Hill was a pianist and composer of extraordinary talent, his spare and angular style and rhythmic and melodic concepts are wholly his own. His harmonic ideas also fall into the same quiet brilliance. In a session from 2005, Piano Jazz host Marian McPartland opens by saying, "I've been listening to your music and I certainly have a lot to learn."

Bio
A native of Chicago, Andrew Hill was interested in music throughout his childhood, and could be found singing and dancing on stage at a young age. By the time he was 13, he had picked up blues and R&B piano, and his first work in music was with local R&B bands like that of Paul Williams. Hill later began to develop his jazz chops in the 1950s while jamming with top-notch players who traveled through Chicago clubs, including Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Johnny Griffin.

In 1961, Hill moved to New York to be Dinah Washington's accompanist, and by 1962, he'd landed a gig playing with Rashaan Roland Kirk in Los Angeles. The following year marked the beginning of Hill's association with Blue Note Records, which released many of his significant albums. During his Blue Note period, Hill released several records featuring other influential jazz artists, including Joe Henderson, Kenny Dorham, Eric Dolphy, Bobby Hutcherson and Elvin Jones. These now-classic recordings showcase Hill's remarkably original style, and show that he wasn't afraid to go against the grain of 1960s post-bop and avant-garde.

By the 1970s, Hill began a career as a jazz educator when he accepted a position at Colgate University. During this time, he also became involved with the Smithsonian, and he performed and conducted workshops at a variety of institutions, from the University of Michigan to Harvard.
Read more: http://www.npr.org/2007/12/21/17460558/andrew-hill-master-of-melody?ft=1&f=10002

Andrew Hill

Over nearly half a century, composer-pianist-ensemble leader Andrew Hill gained international jazz renown for his uniquely original music and recorded ouevre, which is by turns dark, fragile, funny, stark, unforgettably tuneful, percussive, insightful, oblique, transparent and mysterious. With the release of Dusk (Palmetto Records), his first album in ten years, Hill reaches another peak, equaling high points of composition and collaboration he achieved in the 1960s with such innovators as Eric Dolphy, Kenny Dorham, John Gilmore, Roy Haynes, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson,

Read more: http://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/musician.php?id=7627#.UdCU3BbhEhQ

Jazz Musician of the Day: Andrew Hill

Born: June 30, 1937 | Died: April 20, 2007 Instrument: Piano

Over nearly half a century, composer-pianist-ensemble leader Andrew Hill gained international jazz renown for his uniquely original music and recorded ouevre, which is by turns dark, fragile, funny, stark, unforgettably tuneful, percussive, insightful, oblique, transparent and mysterious.

With the release of Dusk (Palmetto Records), his first album in ten years, Hill reaches another peak, equaling high points of composition and collaboration he achieved in the 1960s with such innovators as Eric Dolphy, Kenny Dorham, John Gilmore, Roy Haynes, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Elvin Jones, Sam Rivers, Tony Williams and Reggie Workman, most often commissioned by Blue Note Records.

A folio of songs for sextet loosely inspired by Cane, Jean Toomer's classic volume of stories and poems published during the Harlem Renaissance, Dusk features Hill's New Point of Departure Sextet of virtuosi and the mature vision of an artist who has always flourished just beyond fame's spotlight, the better to see, hear, feel and create without its insistent glare.

At age 63, Hill is especially gratified that there's plentiful new interest in his impeccable, elusive music -- his teasing, just-beyond-grasp lyricism, his improvisations that simulate processes of thought, his themes that come together as naturally as night falls towards the end of a long day.

Hill was born in Chicago (despite mistaken information which prevailed for years that he arrived there in early childhood with his parents from Port au Prince, Haiti), raised in the heart of that city's black South Side, and discovered playing accordion and tapdancing outside his neighborhood's nightclubs and theaters by the great Earl “Fatha” Hines, who liked what he heard and told young Andrew, “I should be your master.” Stan Kenton's arranger- trombonist Bill Russo also encouraged Hill, and introduced him to German composer-music theorist-in-exile.

Full on: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=7627

Andrew Hill and the Penguin Guide Lists

by Ken Blanchard
I chanced upon a some jazz lists this afternoon, and that put me back in that classical mood. First there is the Jazz Calendar Page. Did you know that today is Charlie Christian's 94th birthday? Happy Birthday, Charlie, in that great jazz club in the sky.

Better yet, here is a site that presents all the four star rankings from the Penguin Guide to Jazz (may it be praised). I have relied heavily upon the Penguin Guide in my collecting, and I think it is the only standard for collectors. This stalwart soul lists all the albums that have received a four star ranking in any of the nine editions of the Guide.

He also notes those that got a crown (author's favorite) and those that get a "core collection" rating. I have almost all of the core entries from my well worn Eighth Edition. If you are collecting, get the most recent Guide. The reviews are very helpful. Either way, download the lists from this site linked above. It is very helpful.
Complete on  >>  http://jazznotesdp.blogspot.com/2010/07/andrew-hill-and-penguin-guide-lists.html