Joe Albany - An Evening with Joe Albany 2

At once unexpected and welcome, An Evening with Joe Albany 2 continues where an initial volume released earlier this year leaves off. Another hour culled from a Copenhagen concert in the spring of 1973 finds the embattled bop pianist holding discursive court in the sort of smoked-laced club characteristic of his regular haunts stateside. His preferred mode of expression is once again a series of extended medleys threading together relics of the Great American Songbook with more fully-fleshed, free-standing tunes from the same source interspersed throughout.

Albany initially engineered this performance strategy in an effort to make the countless “low rent” gigs that were a requisite staple of his late career peregrinations into artistically palatable enterprises. They quickly became a mercurial means of staving off boredom brought about by club owners and patrons that expected him to jump through the usual bop hoops. Their cost was an occasional keyboard loquaciousness that could cause him to surrender sight of logic and structure, losing the forest for the trees so to speak. The brevity of the twenty-five tunes explored individually or in medley form here coupled with the rapt and learned Cafe Montmarte audience offers an ideal antidote to such urges, keeping Albany largely on point and thematically focused.

The pianist’s touch is light and nimble from the opening four-song string of ballads, working the pedals along with the keys to ramp up the romantic associations of tunes like “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” and “These Foolish Things” in rapid fashion. A seven-song stretch of discretely rendered ballads follows beginning with a rendition of “You’re Blasé” which somewhat ironically borders on the rhapsodic. Fats Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz” and Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” are also among this number and both carry a ratio of much melodic wheat to very little chaff within their lean durations.

Comprising the set’s third medley, fragmentary ruminations on Waller’s “Ain’t Misbehaving” and “I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plans” segue into a lush and ultimately resplendent examination of Eden Ahbez’s “Nature Boy” with Albany at his most baroque. A late set detour into “C.C. Rider” almost works as an earthbound rebuttal, bringing a deft blues sensibility replete with rolling ornamentations that folds right into an atmospheric and no less agile interpretation of “Lullaby of the Leaves”. Albany remains audibly in control from his bench throughout, the cravings and compulsions that were recurring agents in the curtailing of his career kept at least temporarily on ice to the delight of an enamored crowd.

Derek Taylor
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