David Dalle
Thursday April 20th, 2023 with David Dalle
Farewell to jazz giant Ahmad Jamal; Cesar Franck's only symphony; new music from Puerto Rico and elsewhere.

Today we say farewell to a giant of jazz, the American pianist Ahmad Jamal. Born in 1930, he was a prodigy at the piano, playing everything as a child. He had considerable formal training and had planned on attending Julliard when he was 17, but instead ended up on the road travelling with a jazz band. By 1950, he was in Chicago and shortly after was leading his own groups as well as performing solo. In 1955, the first of what would end up being 60 albums over his long career was released. Despite his virtuosity, he had a more restrained, cool, style on the piano, and was very influential on other musicians, not least of whom was Miles Davis whose early quintet recordings were influenced by Jamal's early recordings. Like Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, who we bade farewell to two weeks ago, it is wonderful when are able to celebrate such a long life of a musician. Today we will hear both early recordings of Ahmad Jamal as well as a few selections from a wonderful concert he gave in 2012, almost six decades after his music was influencing Miles Davis' groundbreaking quintet albums! We will also hear Cesar Franck's only symphony, composed in 1888 near the end of his life. German music, especially Wagner, was having a big influence on French music at this time, and Franck had been studying Wagner's music since 1870. Symphonies were considered a more German tradition and were rarely composed in France during the mid 1800's. Franck's Symphony in d minor shows this German and Wagnerian influence, in its big brass and cyclical structure. It was quite popular in the early 1900s but is now rarely performed. The NAC Orchestra will be performing this symphony tonight along with Saint-Saen's 1st cello concerto. https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/30527