Andrew Hill

With his new quintet recording, Time Lines, the innovative and acclaimed pianist/composer Andrew Hill begins his third tenure with Blue Note Records. In addition to his regular working ensemble of tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Greg Tardy, bassist John Hebert and drummer Eric McPherson, Time Lines reunites Hill with trumpeter Charles Tolliver who twice recorded with him in the 1960s, during his initial stay with Blue Note. Hill refers to Time Lines as his “coming full circle,” and just as his music contains layer upon layer, that statement rings true in a number of ways.

Signed by Blue Note’s legendary founder and producer Alfred Lion -- who called him “my last great protégé” -- Blue Note issued numerous groundbreaking and highly influential albums by Hill between 1963 and 1970. Featuring many of the most provocative, adventurous and important musicians of that incredibly fertile period—including Eric Dolphy, Sam Rivers, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Booker Ervin, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Lee Morgan, John Gilmore, Richard Davis and many others—classic sessions such Black Fire, Judgment!, Point of Departure, Smokestack, Andrew!!!, Grass Roots, Lift Every Voice and Dance With Death earned Hill a well deserved reputation as a brilliant composer, pianist and bandleader, and one of the most compelling and original figures to emerge during that era.

“I was nourished and supported creatively and economically by Alfred Lion,” Hill says. “I left ‘home’ to enter the world after his retirement.” Hill returned “home” for a brief stay in 1989 after current Blue Note President Bruce Lundvall and producer Michael Cuscuna had revived the dormant label. He recorded two albums, Eternal Spirit and But Not Farewell, both of which featured Greg Osby, introducing the alto saxophonist to the label for which he continues to record.

The turn of the century saw Hill return to the spotlight with two acclaimed recordings for Palmetto, as well as a “new” Blue Note recording, Passing Ships, after Cuscuna discovered the original tapes of a lost 1969 nonet session in the vaults. (The New York Times quipped “The best jazz album of 2003 was recorded in 1969.”) But Hill is officially back “home” again with Time Lines, marking Part 1 of the full circle.

Part 2 is the reconnection with Charles Tolliver. When Cuscuna (producer of the Time Lines sessions) issued a 3-disc set of Hill’s previously unreleased Blue Note sessions on his Mosaic Select label, listening to a session that included the trumpeter prompted the pianist to contact his old cohort. (Tolliver was also featured on Dance With Death.) “Charles is primarily a straight-ahead player, but he’s very creative and spontaneous. I wanted to see if the blend would still work.” Hill invited him to join the quartet for a gig at New York’s Birdland club as the group was preparing for the new recording. “It reminded me of some of my older groups, where the audience would become heavily involved in the music. The response at Birdland was just like that.” Hill re-conceived Time Lines for a quintet and Tolliver has joined the ensemble for the group’s upcoming dates.

“At first I’d conceived Time Lines as a retrospective in a sense. But I couldn’t do that. Instead elements of all of the different genres I’ve embraced came out in this music. It encapsulates lyricism and adventurous evolution in a cohesive way.”

So another circle closed as Hill re-connected to the source of those rich exploratory years during his first Blue Note period, and the palpably exciting sense of mutual adventure and discovery that would occur between the musicians and the audience. “If musicians are just trying to be different, but don’t have a synergy with the audience, they have nothing,” Hill states, making a testament to the essence of evolution and innovation that have always been at the core of the jazz legacy; and offering a convincing argument against those who claim that artists who push the boundaries play for themselves and not the audience.

Another element of the full circle is found in the two versions of “Malachi,” the composition that opens and closes the album. It’s a dedication to the great late bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut, who co-founded and performed with the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago. Malachi was one of Hill’s earliest collaborators, playing with him in their hometown Chicago between 1957 and 1959. “It was actually written before Malachi passed,” Hill says, “but in the evolution of playing it with the group, it became an appropriate dedication.” The quintet version that opens the album is beautifully wrought, with percussively delicate piano, fluid and mournful clarinet, and mellow bending trumpet. The closing version is solo piano -- resonant, deeply moving and eloquent.

That same type of creativity and evolutionary development is also evident on another pair of tracks that feature two versions of the same composition. “Ry Round 1” is a jagged composition in 4/4 time, built on a spare, almost ominous bass ostinato, featuring a percussive chordal piano solo, stinging trumpet and fluid bass clarinet soaring over the dark liquid mist of the rhythm section. “Ry Round 2” was recorded one week later, evoking a totally different mood—playful, more deeply grooved and with a jaunty bounce throughout, alternating 5/4 and 4/4 time. This offers a totally different landscape for the soloists, changing not only the aural textures, but the stories they tell. The two versions provide a vividly powerful expression of the spirit of continuous evolution that is the hallmark of the truly visionary artist. Same musicians, same album, plus one week of time passage equal an entirely new creation.

The remaining four pieces display Hill’s full palette of colors and textures. An unusual time signature, in 11/8, gives the title tune its unique flavor. Interweaving and rhythmically varied tenor and trumpet lines, sometimes elongated, sometimes staccato, interface with each other and the piano over a fractured bass ostinato. “’Smooth’ is a rondo, with piano, trumpet and piano repeating and expanding upon the melody,” Hill explains. Hill describes the atmospheric, richly-hued ballad “Whitsuntide” as named for “an old slave expression dating back to the 18th century; a tradition brought from the Caribbean as a celebration around Christmas. It inspired the famous poem Night Before Christmas.” “For Emilio” was commissioned by Chamber Music America as part of its Doris Duke Foundation Initiative. It’s another dedication to an artist who has passed on, Emilio Cruz. “Emilio was a great painter and a Renaissance man. I had many good moments talking with him and was inspired by his work.”

This brings us to another part of the full circle, as all of Hill’s creative efforts are being forged under the specter of his battle with cancer.

“I found out that I had cancer in July 2004, which was the end of my world as I knew it. It wasn’t a bad world for I had plotted my return and had upward mobility. I recorded Dusk, a CD that brought me numerous awards and allowed me to perform on the concert stage for packed audiences. So the answer to ‘what does your re-signing with Blue Note for the third time mean is,’ even though I am living with a terminal illness I am able to look forward to my work and the future with enthusiasm.”

Rather than using his illness as a stimulus to tell new stories and deliver his message while he still has the opportunity, Hill prefers to use it as a positive influence to add a new perspective to his overall vision, and hoping that his efforts “will overlap to inspire younger musicians” all of whom must ultimately face their own mortality. He has already blessed us with a glorious personal legacy of darkly luminescent beauty and powerfully compelling artistry. Like Hill, we should all look forward to his and our future, and appreciate the gifts he has given us and will continue to offer as the most precious and profoundly valuable contributions that they are, beginning with this extraordinary new album.

Andrew Hill was a great and even groundbreaking composer and pianist, yet the relatively circumscribed scale of his innovations might have originally caused him to get lost in the shuffle of the '60s free jazz revolution. While many of his contemporaries were totally jettisoning the rhythmic and harmonic techniques of bop and hard bop, Hill worked to extend their possibilities; his was a revolution from within. Much of the most compelling '60s jazz was nearly aleatoric; Hill, on the other hand, exhibited a determined command of his materials, however abstract they might sometimes be. His composed melodies were labyrinthine, and rhythmically and harmonically complex tunes like "New Monastery" from his Point of Departure album exhibit a sophistication born of mastery, not chance or contingency. As a pianist, Hill had a flowing melodicism and an elastic sense of time. Like his composing, Hill's playing had an ever-present air of spontaneity and was almost completely devoid of cliché.

He began playing the piano at about the age of 13. As a youngster in Chicago, Hill was encouraged by pianist Earl Hines. Jazz composer Bill Russo also took an interest, and introduced Hill to the renowned classical composer Paul Hindemith, with whom Hill studied from 1950-1952. While in his teens, he gigged with prominent jazz musicians passing through the Midwest, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker among them. In 1955, he recorded So in Love with the Sound of Andrew Hill for the Warwick label. He moved to New York in 1961 to work with singer Dinah Washington. After a brief foray to Los Angeles with Rahsaan Roland Kirk's band in 1962, Hill moved back to New York, where he began his recording career in earnest.

He made several records for Blue Note from 1963-1969, both as leader and sideman. Hill's Blue Note work featured some of the best and brightest post-bop musicians of the day, including Eric Dolphy, Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, Tony Williams, and Freddie Hubbard. Like many jazz musicians, Hill eventually turned to academia to make a living. He received his doctorate from Colgate University and served as the school's composer in residence from 1970-1972. Hill relocated to the West Coast, teaching in public schools and prisons in California. He eventually landed a teaching position at Portland State University, where he established the school's Summer Jazz Intensive. In addition to his teaching, Hill continued to perform and record in the '70s and '80s, making records for the Arista-Freedom and Black Saint/Soul Note labels. In 1989 and 1990, Hill recorded twice more for Blue Note, Eternal Spirit and But Not Farewell.

Hill moved back to the New York area in the '90s; a series of performances and new recordings helped place him back in the jazz spotlight. Hill formed a new Point of Departure Sextet for the Knitting Factory's 1998 Texaco Jazz Festival. The band included saxophonists Marty Ehrlich and Greg Tardy, trumpeter Ron Horton, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Billy Drummond. The band went on to play New York club engagements to much acclaim. In 2000, Palmetto Records released Dusk, which was named the best album of 2001 by Down Beat and Jazz Times magazines. It was followed by A Beautiful Day in 2002, Passing Ships in 2003, and Black Fire in 2004, as well as a solid series of Blue Note reissues of his '60s work that included bonus tracks and new liner notes. His 2006 album, Time Lines, reunited him with both trumpeter Charles Tolliver and the Blue Note label. Hill also participated in a 17-piece big band, and a January 2002 engagement at New York's Birdland was filmed and recorded by Palmetto for future broadcast. After battling lung cancer for many years, Hill succumbed to the disease on April 20, 2007, leaving behind a stunning legacy of work. ~ Chris Kelsey, All Music Guide