Art Pepper - Art In The Apple: Live At Fat Tuesday's, New York, 1980 / 2CD set

Widow’s Taste Music and Omnivore Recordings have been dedicated to preserving, restoring and releasing music by saxophone great Art Pepper for years. “Our mission is to introduce unreleased and unheard Art to people who love him, as well as to people who don’t yet know him,” says Laurie Pepper. Since 2012, their collaboration has yielded over 20 releases, covering decades of Art’s career, from an expanded reissue of 1957’s The Art Pepper Quintet to The Complete Maiden Voyage Recordings—the comprehensive 7-CD boxed set featured recordings made in August of 1981, less than a year before Art’s death. The releases have spanned the globe too, they’ve included recordings made in Japan, Switzerland, Canada, and of course, back home in the U.S.

Widow’s Taste Music and Omnivore Recordings are proud to announce the latest release of previously unissued Art Pepper material, this time live in New York City. The music on this elease 'Art In The Apple: Live At Fat Tuesday’s, New York, 1980' was culled from three night stand (April 29–May 2, 1980) at Fat Tuesday’s.

    Of course he’d played New York before, in late ’40s with Stan Kenton, briefly in the ’60s with Buddy Rich’s band. And in 1977 he recorded at the Village Vanguard leading an all-star New York group. But to this event in 1980, he brought his own band—we’d been touring; they were tight. And he was playing his own charts—not just a bunch of standards. And as [Gary] Giddins noted [in the Village Voice]: ‘It made all the difference in the world.’

    —from Laurie Pepper’s notes

The weekend of the shows included events related to the recent publishing of Art and Laurie’s classic book, Straight Life, a book signing at Brentano’s bookstore and an interview with Time magazine and the excitement of it all spilled into the shows.

Restored and mastered by Michael Graves and Jordan McLeod at Osiris Studio in Los Angeles and including Laurie Pepper’s newly penned notes and her photos from the time, Art In The Apple: Live At Fat Tuesday’s, New York, 1980 is an exciting new entry to the ongoing catalog filled with the brilliance of Art Pepper.

    Disc 1:
    Straight Life
    Ophelia
    Blues For Blance
    Over The Rainbow
    Valse Triste
    A Night In Tunisia

    Disc 2:
    Caravan
    Patricia
    Rhythm-A-Ning
    Mambo Koyama
    Red Car