Search - One Night With Blue Note on DVD

This could have been so much better, but buy it anyway

William E Donoghue | Healdsburg CA USA | 02/18/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"One Night With Blue Note: The Historic All-Star Reunion Concert. This was such an historic concert and one of the few opportunities to see the classic Blue Note musicians playing together on video. It's a shame that it was clumsily reedited and we are denied fine performance that should have been included in a second volume. I collect jazz, blues and roots music videos and this has always been one of my very favorite jazz videos. It was amazingly well performed, edited into videos for the time with a fade to a blue image of Stanley Turrentine playing on the stairs, included a riveting three-song mini-concert with Charles Lloyd and his classic quartet with the late Michel Petrucianni sitting in Keith Jarrett's piano chair, and many highly memorable moments.
Steven Reed, the producer of this release and Michael Cuscuna of Blue Note has chosen to edit out some of the finest moments of the concert (including two of the three Charles Lloyd songs), change the expertly-edited sequences in a vain effort to show the audience (usually behind a intrusive camera man, an awkward and distracting choice) and substitute some new footage. The new footage (Record-Me, Appointment in Ghana, The Jumpin' Blues and Scratch My Back) is welcome but the missing footage, When You Wish Upon A Star by Stanley Jordan, Broadside by Bennie Wallace, Passion Dance with McCoy Tyner and Jackie McLean and the full Charles Lloyd concert (featuring his comeback band) including The Blessing and Lady Day is missed. All are available on the laser disk and VHS versions.
I guess that we should be thankful that he included a full two hours of music but would a second disc with an additional hour be asking too much? Then, of course, there are the additional audio recordings on the three-disk set issued on Blue Note. En Encanto and How Long by Charles Lloyd, A Child Is Born by the Turrentine/Smith quartet, I'm Glad There Is You by Grover Washington and Kenny Burrell, I'm Getting Sentimental Over Your by Lou Donaldson with Jimmy Smith, and others. Is there a second DVD Volume coming? If so, why split up the full Charles Lloyd set, a comeback triumph at the time?
It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity missed."