THE MODERN JAZZ QUARTET: PYRAMID

Performer: The Modern Jazz Quartet
Author: The Modern Jazz Quartet
Number of discs: 1
Label: Pure Pleasure
Support: LP
Genre: Jazz
Year: 2017

180 GRAMS AUDIOPHILE LP
Remastered by Ray Staff at Air Mastering in London!

Published by Atlantic in 1960, Pyramid is an album by the wonderful ensemble Modern Jazz Quartet that collects some performances recorded in two sessions, one on August 22, 1959 and one on January 15, 1960.

In the period in which the quartet's style flourished and made its place among the great names of jazz of the time, and with already a series of highly prestigious works behind it (see Django), Milt Jackson on vibraphone, John Lewis on piano, Percy Heath on double bass and Connie Kay on drums produce this pair of some of the most solid sessions of that period.
In the setlist you can find an imaginative and short version of Lewis' Vendome, the title track Pyramid (Blues for Jumior) by Brown (the longest piece on the album, with its eleven minutes of duration) and the famous Django, also signed by Lewis.
Among the non-group compositions, we then find the standards It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) by Duke Ellington, the classic How High the Moon (already performed, a few years earlier, by Les Paul, Sarah Vaughan and Chet Baker) and Jim Hall's Romaine which closes the album.

According to specialized critics, the Modern Jazz Quartet became a jazz institution starting from this album with a series of creative and stimulating performances (as those of their previous works already were, among other things). A great album that a great jazz critic defined as a pearl!

John Lewis, piano
Milt Jackson, vibraphone
Percy Heath, double bass
Connie Kay, drums

Recording made in August 1959 at the Music Inn in Lennox.
Tracklist
Vendome
Pyramid
It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Aint Got That Swing)
Django
How High The Moon
Romaine