Contours (Remaster) (CD)

Oklahoma-born sax giant Sam Rivers started his career on the Boston jazz scene in the late 1940s, playing with Jaki Byard and others. In the mid-'60s he finally broke through as a major player, mostly due to his work with Miles Davis. Besides becoming an in-demand sideman for the likes of Cecil Taylor and Bobby Hutcherson, he began an important solo career that mated an avant-garde free-jazz approach with a more rooted, blues-influenced sensibility. Rivers outlasted many of his peers, and was still active and vital into the 21st century.

• Category:  Music  »  Jazz  »  Saxophone
• Format: CD   Learn more about the CD format using Tower WIKI.
• Release Date: October 5, 2004
• Label: Blue Note Records (USA)
• UPC: 724347316326
• WAPI (Tower ID): 105773704
• Average Customer Review: There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review!
• Tower.com Sales Rank: #82287 in Music (See Top 100 Music Bestsellers)
• #7024 in Jazz (See Top 100 Jazz Bestsellers)
• #396 in Saxophone (See Top 100 Saxophone Bestsellers)

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Personnel: Sam Rivers (flute, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone); Freddie Hubbard (trumpet); Herbie Hancock (piano); Ron Carter (bass instrument); Joe Chambers (drums).

Liner Note Author: Don Heckman.

Recording information: Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey (05/21/1965).

Saxophonist Sam Rivers certainly assembled a team of hot soloists for this album. However, his compositions are more than just vehicles for improvisation. Rivers's largely angular, even jarring, melodies clearly seek to define a new direction in jazz; they do not fall back on bebop forms or hard-bop funkiness. Each composition contains an abstract "head" and the harmonic underpinning flatly rejects the usual chord progressions found in most standard repertoire. On this 1965 date, Rivers and his band also avoid the blues format.

"Mellifluous Cacophony" (performed twice here) is one such example. On this composition, Rivers begins with an asymmetrical melody that suggests atonality. However, the soloing remains firmly rooted in the jazz lexicon, as pianist Herbie Hancock, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, and Rivers himself rip into these changes with abandon. "Euterpe" is an ethereal ballad replete with a long, free-floating form and stream-of-consciousness solos from the quintet. Rivers's own flute solo is marked by questing lines and exquisite modal excursions. Overall, this is intellectually stimulating music that avoids precise definition. Suffice to say, CONTOURS is forward-looking jazz at its best.

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