CD Reviews

Ran Blake | Driftwoods

Tompkins Square (2009)

By JON GARELICK | March 10, 2009

3.5 Stars

You probably don't think about an acoustic jazz pianist's use of the sustain pedal except when you're listening to Ran Blake. In his slow-tempo ruminations, which are full of dramatic rests, the final chord of a phrase will bleed into the beginning of a single-note melodic phrase, and harmonies will drift like the fog in one of his beloved film noirs.

In this solo piano disc, he touches on only one film score, from Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker, but Driftwoods is dedicated to singers, and the reference is to Sarah Vaughan's version of the Quincy Jones themesong. Even the most familiar pieces here ("I Loves You, Porgy," "Unforgettable") are linked to particular performers and performances — they're of a piece with Blake's idiosyncratic interpretations.

Declamatory, stabbed-out single-note phrases will melt into a whispered chord in the space of a measure or open into dissonant flourishes. Each move has its dramatic, even cinematic effect, as when Billie Holiday & Lewis Allen's "Strange Fruit" turns minor-key (Alex North? Paul Glass?) at the place where we'd hear the lyrics "Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze." I'm not sure what words Blake is hammering so insistently on the repeated note from "Dancing in the Dark" — I'll have to find Vaughan's version with the Hal Mooney orchestra that he cites in the liner notes.

RAN BLAKE | Live on WGBH 89.7 FM | March 18 @ 9 pm

Related: Mixed media, 2009: The year in jazz, Fall Jazz Preview: Blindfold test, More

Mixed media
Film noir has been a running theme in composer/pianist Ran Blake's work since the beginning of his career — his very first album, The Newest Sound Around (RCA, 1962), with singer Jeanne Lee, began with David Raskin's theme to Otto Preminger's Laura .
2009: The year in jazz
Here, in no particular order, are some of my favorite things from among the people, CDs, and concerts I wrote about in 2009.
Fall Jazz Preview: Blindfold test
A search for this fall’s must-see jazz revealed a lot of overlapping personnel — Jim Hobbs, Allan Chase, Joe Morris, Taylor Ho Bynum. Hey, you wanted to know what’s good , right?
Cuban and Brazilian imports, plus homeboy Ran Blake
Groove isn't everything, but it'll do.
Hard times
When last year the BBC interrupted its broadcast of Little Dorrit — which hinges on the downfall of a Bernie Madoff–like figure — for a tawdry true-crime documentary, thousands of viewers complained: don't leave us hanging!
Review: MI-5
When in 2002 BBC1 launched Spooks , from independent producer Kudos Film and Television, it must have been something of a courageous act.
Dancing ballet or not
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's Celebrity Series program at the Cutler Majestic last weekend could have been a primer of the ways not to dance ballet.
PBS looks at the darker side of changing the world
Sometimes you want to give PBS a big grateful kiss just for staying the course while most of TV, losing ground to the interweb age, hovers between cultural hemorrhage and commercial death.
Eric Jackson and Jazz Week
When he headed for BU from his home town of Camden, New Jersey, in 1968, Eric Jackson thought his ultimate destination was medical school and a career in psychiatry. But as a jazz fan from an early age — and the son of a fairly renowned jazz DJ — he found himself on the closed-circuit BU student station, WTBU.
Open for change
Last Saturday's first flash of dry weather in a week didn't stop dozens of Boston activists from holing up in a Chinatown loft, and plotting to protect citizens from Clear Channel, FCC oppressors, and other threats to an open, fair, and honest media.
Through a glass darkly
Predicting a Super Bowl winner doesn't make you a genius: after all, given a pool of 32 teams, one of them is bound to capture the trophy. But predicting the future for an industry that's been buffeted by new technologies and economic vicissitudes, and sometimes seems to have all the substance and staying power of sea foam? That's an accomplishment.
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