Andrew Hill was a great and even groundbreaking composer and pianist, yet the relatively circumscribed scale of his innovations might have originally caused
him to get lost in the shuffle of the '60s free jazz revolution. While many of his contemporaries were totally jettisoning the rhythmic and harmonic techniques
of bop and hard bop, Hill worked to extend their possibilities; his was a revolution from within. Much of the most compelling '60s jazz was nearly aleatoric; Hill,
on the other hand, exhibited a determined command of his materials, however abstract they might sometimes be. His ...read more
Andrew Hill was a great and even groundbreaking composer and pianist, yet the relatively circumscribed scale of his innovations might have originally caused
him to get lost in the shuffle of the '60s free jazz revolution. While many of his contemporaries were totally jettisoning the rhythmic and harmonic techniques
of bop and hard bop, Hill worked to extend their possibilities; his was a revolution from within. Much of the most compelling '60s jazz was nearly aleatoric; Hill,
on the other hand, exhibited a determined command of his materials, however abstract they might sometimes be. His composed melodies were labyrinthine,
and rhythmically and harmonically complex tunes like "New Monastery" from his Point of Departure album exhibit a sophistication born of mastery, not chance
or contingency. As a pianist, Hill had a flowing melodicism and an elastic sense of time. Like his composing, Hill's playing had an ever-present air of spontaneity
and was almost completely devoid of cliché.
Taken from All Music Guide. « hide
