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Bruce Hornsby: Camp Meeting

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: SonyBMG/Legacy
Released: 2007.08.07
Time:
 64:57
Category: Jazz, Post-Bop
Producer(s): Bruce Hornsby
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.brucehornsby.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2020
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Questions and Answers (O.Coleman) - 4:53
[2] Charlie, Woody and You/Study #22 (B.R.Hornsby/Ch.Ives) - 5:58
[3] Solar (M.Davis) - 7:03
[4] Death and the Flower (K.Jarrett) - 5:45
[5] Camp Meeting (B.R.Hornsby) - 5:43
[6] Giant Steps (J.Coltrane) - 6:04
[7] Celia (B.Powell) - 7:50
[8] We'll Be Together Again (C.Fischer/F.Laine) - 5:38
[9] Stacked Mary Possum (B.R.Hornsby) - 4:34
[10] Straight, No Chaser (T.Monk) - 2:59
[11] Un Poco Loco/Chant Song (B.Powell/B.R.Hornsby) - 7:55

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bruce Hornsby - Piano, Mixing, Producer
Christian McBride - Bass
Jack DeJohnette - Drums

Pat Metheny - Executive Producer
Joe Ferla - Engineer
Wayne Pooley - Additional Engineer, Mixing
Greg Calbi - Mastering
Melissa Smith - Audio Production, Production Assistant
Dave Bett - Art Direction, Design
Kathy Hornsby - Photography, Cover Painting

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


CD 2007 Legacy - 88697096632

Recorded at Tossington Sound (Williamsburg, VA).
Mastered at Sterling Sound (New York, NY).



Those looking for the mellow adult contemporary rock of Bruce Hornsby's 1980s hits, be aware that Camp Meeting is a straight-up contemporary jazz album, a piano trio set with bassist Christian McBride and legendary drummer Jack DeJohnette. Hornsby, a jazz pianist since his college days who fell into pop almost by accident, shows the influence of past masters like Bill Evans in his refined, restrained playing, and McBride and DeJohnette provide sure, able support. Split between originals and standards by Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and Keith Jarrett, Camp Meeting is a solid piano jazz set.

Charity Stafford - All Music Guide



Who knew that pianist/composer Bruce Hornsby, the popsmith of the hit "The Way it Is" and the bluegrass collaborator with Ricky Skaggs, was a jazz sleeper agent since his college days? On this 11-track recording, Hornsby's "Bill Evans-meets-the-hymnbook" pianism is buoyed by Christian McBride's brotherly-loving bass lines and Jack DeJohnette's Big Easy/Windy City drumming. Check out the light-speed lyricism he lays down on the previously unrecorded Ornette Coleman number "Questions and Answers," the drum 'n' bass rendition of Coltrane's "Giant Steps," and the Meters-motored take on Miles Davis's "Solar." Keith Jarrett's ballad "Death and a Flower" is played with reverence and restraint, and the downbeats on Thelonious Monk's "Straight, No Chaser" and Bud Powell's "Celia" and "Un Poco Loco" don't do injustice to their bebop roots. Hornsby keeps it rhythmically real, and he's given us a true sound of surprise.

Eugene Holley, Jr. - Amazon.com



Camp Meeting is a challenging assignment for Bruce Hornsby fans. Are you ready for your man to make a full album of jazz trio music that is wholly instrumental, challenging, progressive, and unflinchingly serious? It is an equal challenge for jazz fans - are you ready to take seriously a jazz pianist whose career has been based on pleasant gospel-pop and some jams with the Grateful Dead?

Heard in the context of Hornsby's successful career as a pop singer-songwriter, Camp Meeting is more than a departure. Though Hornsby's music has always been informed by his training in jazz (at Berklee and the University of Miami where, no doubt, he played his share of Monk and Bill Evans), this jazz flavor has been the equivalent of a dash of Old Bay season on some fries - zesty but not exactly gourmet stuff. Camp Meeting, however, is full immersion. Not a gimmick record, not a pop record with a guest solo from Branford Marsalis, not a set of "American Songbook" covers by a pop star - nope. This is a set of modern classics and originals plopping the pianist in the midst of a free-playing jazz trio. It is jazz sink-or-swim. In the deep end. With waves.

Hornsby can swim.

Fans of Hornsby's pop work may or may not like Camp Meeting, depending on their taste for straight modern jazz. But they can hold their heads high when questions of the piano man's chops are raised. Jazz fans may have a harder time facing the fact that a musician not steeped in the music for the last 20 years can acquit himself this well on short notice. But what impresses most about Camp Meeting is not Hornsby's pianism. (He is a reasonably fluid player with some harmonic daring and flair for rhythmic excitement, but he is not to be confused with top echelon pianists such as Jason Moran or Ethan Iverson, much less obvious role models such as Keith Jarrett.) Rather, the vision for this record is strong. Hornsby and his band mates - Christian McBride on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums - have created a trio sound in line with recent work by the Bad Plus and the Esbjorn Svensson Trio. While steeped in the harmony and interactive jazz vocabulary of the jazz trio, this music makes a bid for how jazz can organically incorporate a certain energy and rhythmic feeling from rock.

The best work on Camp Meeting is bracing and original. "Charlie, Woody 'n' You" is a Hornsby tune that incorporates the clusterific harmonies of Charles Ives into a blues anchored in a grooving bass line. McBride and DeJohnette ground the proceedings, allowing Hornsby to swing through the air on some fairly wild trapeze. Rather than just playing the blues licks natural to a rock musician, Hornsby stays within the angular vocabulary of the tune itself, playing jagged lines that are both playful and ripping. McBride's solo is even more "out", exploiting sonic textures of the acoustic bass (bowing close to the bridge, slapping strings against the fingerboard) that aren't heard much in "straight ahead" playing.

The title song begins with an electronic percussion track over which Hornsby plays a series of enticingly voiced chords - one part McCoy Tyner and another part modern classical player. Hornsby's improvisation alternates flowing, chromatic lines with locked-hand passages that sound half-gospel/half-Sondheim. When the tune, the pianist's own, flips into a unison line between McBride's electric bass and Hornsby's left hand, you get just a glimpse of the pop-tunesmith at work. Without being compromised in any way, the performance suggests a way that jazz might become enticing to a non-jazz fan.

A similar use of electronic percussion is featured on both Ornette Coleman's "Questions and Answers" (never before recorded, apparently) and Coltrane's "Giant Steps". The Coleman tune suits the band - skittering and fragmentary, it covers Hornsby's one obvious limitation as a jazz pianist, which is his weakness at building logical melodic improvisations across the bar lines and complex chord patterns. "Giant Steps" swings very well, but there is a sense that Hornsby is just barely surviving the harmonic steeplechase, running licks on the chords without always connecting them logically. McBride, with no technical or musical limitations in sight, plays a solo that defines what Hornsby can't yet do as a jazz player. But this quibble is largely academic - this trio's "Giant Steps" starts with a cool chiming version of the melody, reharmonized interestingly, then rips until the melody returns, completely swung over DeJohnette's daring splashes.

In other places, the trio finds other ways to visit jazz history with its own identity intact. "We'll Be Together Again" would seem to be an invitation for Hornsby to get his Bill Evans on, but instead he attacks it with a gorgeous set of down home harmonies, solo, then brings the band in over a semi-stride feeling that is reminiscent of Errol Garner. Miles Davis's "Solar" is given a similar treatment - solo piano leading to an atypical feel - an off-kilter funk that DeJohnette plays simply at first and then with an increasing sense of architecture. "Celia", by Bud Powell, is funkier still, starting with just a fragment of the melody alternated with gospel chords then building to a full reading of the complex bop line. It's no surprise, then, when the trio digs Monk's "Straight, No Chaser" through a second-line lens, or when Bud's "Un Poco Loco" is stretched out for almost eight minutes over a Latin groove that highlights DeJohnette's unique gift for the pocket.

If McBride and DeJohnette had any doubt about this project going in (and there is every reason to believe that they were enthusiastic about it), that doubt surely vanished. The drummer is given free reign to play with the full range of his polyrhythmic creativity. The sound of the drums and, particularly, the acoustic bass is outstanding throughout. The duet on Keith Jarrett's "Death and the Flower" gives the piano plenty of room to chime and captures the bass sound with unusual clarity and atmosphere. The written bass line moves against the melody with a classical intelligence and dramatic logic. Throughout, the trio sound is balanced and integrated.

As a thoroughgoing jazz snob on some days, I have to admit that I was fully ready to be uppity about Camp Meeting. Even now, 95% won over, I sometimes hear Hornsby as a jazz amateur with impeccable support. On his own "Stacked Marcy Possum", he is essentially playing in his own bag with jazz musician support - sort of the way Sting sounded on his first solo album. (This track also contains a series of studio edits that jar without sounding knowingly hip - they just sound like sloppy editing.)

But, mostly, Camp Meeting convinces. It is only rarely a jazz take on Hornsby's usual music, and it never feels like an example of a pop musician making a cheap grab for legitimacy or nostalgia-dollars. Why did Hornsby do it? Because he obviously loves jazz, loves playing jazz, and can do it at a high level in the face of pre-existing skepticism.

And, if love, ability, and perseverance were not enough, there is also the fact that this group has something to say about widening slightly the sound of jazz trio playing - an accomplishment to be wished for but hardly expected from the likes of Bruce Hornsby. Incorporating fresh sounds into a jazz repertoire, Camp Meeting passes - indeed, surpasses - muster as a serious piece of art. It's a reason to rejoice again the richness of jazz's intersection with popular music.

Will Layman - 05 Sep 2007
PopMatters



The funny thing about roots is that you don't know how they really look until you shake loose all of the dirt. Who knew that the "popular music" pianist/songwriter/singer, Bruce Hornsby, was a jazz musician at heart? Many may recall the Grammy Award winning artist from his 1986 platinum hit and album of the same title The Way It Is (RCA), marked by new folk sounds, social consciousness lyrics, and unorthodox yet glowing piano playing. Hornsby has sinced crossed the borders of jazz, pop, classical, bluegrass and rock music, to the chagrin of critics who can't quite put him into a specific category. And here is Camp Meeting , a "Sho' Nuff," "straight no chaser,"—jazz recording, that is illuminating, inventive, and immersive.

With a set of eleven selections covering fresh material as well as covers by Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett and others, Hornsby admittedly needed to go and hone his jazz axe skills. But with the help of a trio of jazz heavies including drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Christian McBride, they come out of the woodshed literally swinging and with plenty of gusto. When you listen to the incendiary version of Coltrane's "Giant Steps," there's no doubt Hornsby's done his homework and then some.

Hornsby's piano skills are profound: swinging hard, ruminating softly on a tender ballad, or wailing the blues. Quick and quirky improvisations, smooth changes in tempo and a sensitive touch, are all present in the repertoire and most importantly, his sound. McBride's bass is resonant, cracking and emotive; his soloing, as heard on "Celia" is excellent. DeJohnette is still a monster drummer of impeccable timing and force, his rhythms massaging and driving the music. The trio's essence is pure on Ornette Coleman's "Questions and Answers" as walking bass line, free piano soloing and a variety of tricks from DeJohnette jump starts the recording.

Drawing from a deep well of Hornsby's many influences, there's a little something for everyone. Folk and swing on "Camp Meeting," a thick Irish Riverdance—like savor on "Stacked Marcy Possum," risky Latin on "Un Poco Loco," by pianist Bud Powell, or the obscure '70s Keith Jarrett piece, "Death and the Flower." All seem to flow naturally out of Hornsby's waters.

The jazz folk will critique it, and others may or may not get it; but those who know good music will appreciate and hope Hornsby revisits the Camp Meeting again, very soon.

Mark F. Turner - August 6, 2007
© 2020 All About Jazz



Bruce Hornsby, the singer and pianist who will forever be known for his socially conscious hit “The Way It Is,” has gone and pulled a Harry Connick Jr., abandoning his vocals for an album of instrumental jazz. But Hornsby’s transition is more radical, for three reasons. One, despite his jazz training, he has been known until this point as a pop musician. Two, he is working in a trio now, whereas Connick’s vocal-less group is a quartet in which a saxophonist shares the spotlight. Three-and here’s the big one-Hornsby has recruited two of the best in the business to back him up: bassist Christian McBride and drummer Jack DeJohnette.

To boot, Hornsby has put together a spectacular program for Camp Meeting, one that mixes some of the most familiar themes in the jazz songbook (“Solar,” “Giant Steps,” “Straight, No Chaser”) with a few originals (“Camp Meeting,” “Stacked Mary Possum”) and lesser-known compositions from jazz giants (Ornette Coleman’s “Questions and Answers,” Keith Jarrett’s “Death and the Flower”). And what fun this record is. Blindfolded, I wouldn’t have guessed this was Hornsby if you gave me 200 tries. Nothing here sounds like his pop music. Not only is his playing remarkable, but so is the interaction among the three musicians. The music stretches and contracts. It races, it gallops and it rumbles. It sounds like Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea and Bud Powell and Bill Evans, all of them and none of them.

His “Giant Steps” follows Coltrane’s rapid succession of chord changes but, until the very end, none of the actual chords. Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser” becomes funky and sprightly, almost a new tune. His old-meets-new concoction called “Charlie, Woody and You” slithers and glides, Hornsby’s hands contrasting against each other. The support he gets from McBride and DeJohnette is magnificent too. Invited to try something new, they play with a heightened sense of freedom. If these guys stick with it, they’ll be the freshest piano trio out there.

Steve Greenlee - April 25, 2019
JazzTimes — “America’s Jazz Magazine”



Jack DeJohnette und Christian McBride, so berichtet ihr Piano-Partner, hätten ihren diebischen Spaß gehabt, Freunde in diese Produktion hineinhören - und den Namen des Pianisten raten zu lassen. Es muß der schwerste blindfold test aller Zeiten gewesen sein. Niemand vermag sich vorzustellen, daß ein Pop-Grammy-Gewinner, einer, der über 10 Mio Platten verkauft hat, die Rhythmusgruppe McBride/DeJohnette mit Ideen füttern kann. Bruce Hornsby hat dafür den schönen Vergleich gewählt: "Stell´ dir vor, du lernst 6 Jahre lang Französisch und spricht es auch ganz flüssig, dann aber sprichst du es 30 Jahre lang nicht mehr. Dann wirst du urplötzlich Französisch-Dolmetscher bei der UNO. Du kannst dir vorstellen, wie hart und einschüchternd das wäre. So aber war es für mich, Jazz zu spielen." Nun denn, ganz unbeleckt vom Jazz ist Bruce Hornsby, Jahrgang 1954, nach einem Studium und Berklee und an der University of Miami (bachelor in music) denn doch nicht. 1993, auf seinem Album "Harbor Lights", assistierten schon Branford Marsalis und Pat Metheny.

Außerdem bekam er starken Rückwind durch zwei Motivationsschübe: vor 5 Jahren bat ihn Pat Metheny anlässlich eines Konzertes mit der Virginia Jazz Orchestra Band, bei Miles Davis´ "Solar" einzusteigen, und Jack DeJohnette soll den Popmusiker, backstage nach einem Konzert des Keith Jarrett Trios, mit der Frage konfrontiert haben: "Wann machen wir was zusammen?" Ganz offensichtlich haben sie beiden eine Qualität in Hornsby erkannt, die im Jazzlager nicht so verbreitet ist. Sie ist schwierig zu fassen und ließe sich am ehesten umschreiben mit dem Vermögen, instrumentalen Jazz als Song aufzufassen. Im April 2006 jedenfalls fühlte Bruce Hornsby sich gerüstet, und die beiden Paten wirkten mit: Jack DeJohnette am Schlagzeug (mit einem ziemlich anderen Ton als bei Keith Jarrett) und Pat Metheny als "de facto Executive Producer". Sie haben auf das richtige Pferd gesetzt: "Camp Meeting" entwickelt schon nach wenigen Takten einen eigenen Charakter, den es nicht mehr verliert. Ein Merkmal ist klanglicher Art, nach zwei Minuten in "Questions and Answers" eröffnet eine TripHop-verfremdete hi-hat eine zweite rhythmische Ebene neben dem hi-fi-Schlagzeug von DeJohnette. Der Effekt taucht in "Solar" wieder auf, beim Titelstück, einem hymnischen Gospelsong mit New Orleans backbeat, und "Giant Steps" wird ebenso damit eröffnet, bloß in weitaus höherem Tempo. Das zweite Merkmal ist eher struktureller Natur, ein "eckiges" Phrasieren, als habe das Trio von The Bad Plus sich anstecken lassen, ohne freilich deren Exaltiertheiten zu übernehmen. Dieses Trio nämlich wurzelt viel zu sehr in amerikanischem Mutterboden, Hornsby zitiert eine sehr gediegene Einflußkette von Samuel Barber und Charles Ives bis Keith Jarrett und Bud Powell, nicht zu vergessen Bill Evans und Folk-Hymnik.

Dies alles hebt dieses Trio von vielen gleichen Instrumentariums´ ab. Virtuosität und große Anschlagskultur werden ersetzt durch kluge Repertoirewahl, pfiffige Arrangements und ein paar originelle Eigenkompositionen. Allein drei Blues-Stücke sind dabei, neben "Solar" und dem ein wenig Bluegrass-inspirierten "Straight no Chaser" (wiederum mit New Orleans backbeat) auch die verwunderliche Mischung aus Blues & Ives in "Charlie, Woody and you". "Celia" hat ein leichtes Reggae-Feeling, "We´ll be together again" erklingt als dunkler Kirchenmusik-Hymnus. Thematische Ausschmückungen halten sich in Grenzen, es dominiert sozusagen die pure Expression, eine Schlichtheit, die allenfalls noch bei Robin Holcomb zu finden ist. Nur dass Bruce Hornsby noch einen Dreh jazziger aufspielt (der Herr Esbjörn, der sich auf ähnlichem Terrain versucht, sieht dagegen ganz alt aus).

© Michael Rüsenberg, 2007
 

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