Silver, Horace: Horace Silver Quintet (Arthaus DVD)

Recorded Live At The Umbria Jazz Festival 1976

HORACE SILVER - Piano
BOB BERG - Tenor Saxophone
TOM HARRELL - Trumpet
STEVE BESKRONE - Bass
EDDIE GLADDEN - Drums

Horace Silver is one of the few jazz greats who can fi ll whole
evenings with his own songs, some of which are so well known
that a non-specialist audience could hum along to them and
jazz enthusiasts certainly recognise his big tunes: The Preacher,
Doodlin’, Song For My Father and Sister Sadie. He is regarded as
one of the last living composers of jazz standards and one of the
creators of a jazz style known in the 1950s as Hard Bop and in the
Sixties as Soul Jazz. He is still an inspiration for jazz musicians
and may be considered one of jazz’s last big “beasts“.

Arthaus Musik presents a recording of a concert night in Orvieto
where Horace Silver and his quintet were guests at the Umbria
Jazz Festival in 1976. This carefully restored recording, made more
than 25 years ago, captures a classic jazz night and pays tribute
to a Jazz pianist who has enjoyed the reputation of a popular jazz
composer over the last forty years.

The present DVD also closes a gap in Silver’s recording history as it documents his favourite line-up - the quintet: “I prefer a small group. Jazz is improvisation and in a small group there is plenty of space for everyone to stretch out and blow. Also, a small group these days is far more practical. Large bands are nice to record with, but I wouldn’t want to work on the road with one.”

Silver’s 1970s quintet is now practically unknown as he never took this formation into the recording studio. This recording documents an important aspect of Horace Silver’s long musical career – his love of the quintet formation. Therefore, TDK presents these 25-year-old tapes even though the video quality of this fi lm does not always conform to highest present-day DVD standards. Nonetheless, this recording can truly be regarded as a document of considerable value among Jazz recordings.