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Reviews: Ray Brown Trio: Summer Wind - Live at the Loa

Reviews: 6

Review by JW July 4, 2005 (2 of 2 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:  
Explosive dynamics. Great atmosphere. Gene Harris on piano with his signature clear and punchy style. Ray Brown on bass. Jeff Hamilton on drums. What can go wrong? Very upbeat, traditional, swinging live jazz gig of the you are there variety without the annoying audience participation that sometimes plagues these things. Great fun. The sound quality is equal to the best there is. A good mix of ballads and swinging standards. Great drum-centric version of 'It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing'. To me it characterizes the entire disc. Slightly different twists to well known tunes (Summer Wind, Mona Lisa).

Jw

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Review by HumanMedia June 12, 2006 (1 of 1 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:    
Fantastic music. The original master tapes arent in the best condition (dropouts etc) but despite the SACD is still very good. Wasnt expecting to like the piano, but the performance is superb. Highly Recommended without any reservation.

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Review by Julien November 28, 2006 (2 of 2 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:  
For jazz music I love live performance so much!

These three greats were definitely on a good day and gave us some wonderful performances of jazz pieces I believe anyone would find hard not to enjoy.
I personally enjoy this SACD even more than "Soular Energy", live being one reason, and the main one being the simple fact that in Soular Energy Ray Brown was not tuned well (D string too low and A string even worse).

My two favorites are track 2 "The Real Blues", whith Ray Brown at his best, so cool I can only think of a Chinese word to describe my feeling while listening to it, and track 7 "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", with Gene Harris at his best in some orgasmic piano performance!

The sound is very plain, definitely not as clean as in Soular, but it is live and I love it. Though I remember that when I had B&W speakers the double bass sounded a little uncontrolled. My guess is that if your system has loose bass this might be the result too.

Anyway I notice how some recordings used to sound bad to me with a cheaper system and are now among my favorite ones, so I usually listen to a recording on a few different systems before writing a review. Live at the Loa is a winner.

If I were you and had to buy only one Ray Brown disc, maybe it would be this one.

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Review by miguelito54 February 6, 2008 (4 of 4 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:  
Gene Harris was one of the greatest bluesy jazz pianists ever - if you love that, go for this CD. I once saw that trio live (with a different drummer) and they managed to play even Jobim tunes with a blues tinge! Ray Brown plays bluesier too, whenever he shares the stage with Harris. It can become too much of a good thing, though - but this is only a minor complaint. One can have a helluva good time with this CD, as did the audience. No innovations here, but more than solid good jazz.
Sound is very good, although Concord live recordings always sound a trifle hard and bright for these ears. And I wonder if the reverb on the bass was added in the mix ...
The Ray Brown Trio live recordings on Telarc sound more natural, more direct and are musically more progressive, if you are looking for that.
Still, recommended.

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Review by analogue March 30, 2012 (2 of 2 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:  
I truly miss the Concord sacd releases. Its a pity that they do not release any more sacds from their vaults as they were by and large a pretty excellent selection of discs to own. Mostly modern jazz with excellent sound from classic performers.

Ray Brown is a legend in jazz and rightfully considered one of the all time great bass masters. This is a very excellent recording with terrific sonics. Concord made very superb dsd transfers from the original tapes and they wanted the discs to sound steady and meaty......full of organic sound. They also took great care of not embellishing the sound of the tapes and remained faithful to their original intent. This is one of the reasons I miss their releases so much.

Performance wise this is a very good release. Brown is ofcourse a master of jazz and knows how to construct the framework of great jazz. And yes.....its modern jazz music that still connects and relates to the past. This music is not experimental our artsy fartsy. It never strays from the classical traditions its just that it modern to our ears. Just listen to the small buy passionate crowd respond to this music.

Sound wise this sacd continues the great Concord recording technique and pure dsd transfer process. This sacd spotters excellent sound and must be turned up rather high to get the full effect. Browns bass work is awesome and this recording captures the entire nuance of his bass playing.The entire disc is gorgeous.

If you love jazz I would really recommend this sacd to you with no hesitations.

A terrific sacd.
Highly recommended.

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Review by lenw April 18, 2013 (1 of 1 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:  
Very good album musically, especially Gene Harris's piano work. I agree with much the previous reviewers have said about this album musically. But only one reviewer gave an accurate sub-par indication IMO of this albums sound quality in stereo. The original source is stated to be analog vintage 1988 and I because I haven't heard the RBCD version I have no idea of the sound quality of the original recording. But I have other SACD's sourced from analog masters (Analogue Productions: Lou Donaldson) vintage 1960 that sound considerably more natural and open than this SACD. This "Summer Wind" SACD sounds loud and somewhat compressed (bloated bass and overly aggressive highs) by comparison. In of sound quality I would rate this SACD in the lower half of my collection.

Musically I find it satisfying, but not sonically.

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