We critics and editors should start considering DVDs along with CDs when making our poll choices, monthly best-of lists and whatever else. Now we’ve got DVDs banished to little box items, maybe two a month, somehow not warranting the kind of attention we give to CDs.
Ari Hoenig’s Kinetic Hues (Smalls Records) is fantastically filmed and grippingly performed by the drummer with pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, tenorist Jacques Schwarz-Bart and bassist Matt Penman. (That’s Philadelphian, French, part-Jewish French Caribbean and New Zealander.) My TV has iffy audio and still this thing sounds incredible, so if you’ve got better gear it will bore a hole in your skull (in a good way). Recorded on 9/12/03, this video and this music capture something special about the scene at Fat Cat and this area of Manhattan more generally.
Not to say that all DVDs are good. I was disappointed with the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble 20th Anniversary Concert disc from Nine Winds—music good, filming and editing execrable. Peter Bernstein’s Live At Smoke from Mel Bay is much better; the filming doesn’t rise to the level of Kinetic Hues but it’s solid. I just wish Peter had played more intros (much as I love Larry Goldings’s intros). Fresh Sound‘s DVD companion to the great two-CD The Sound of New York Jazz Underground is interesting for interviews and NY scene footage, but the in-studio music clips have no bass—Fernando Huergo was going direct. Head straight to the CD for the music; on the film it’s well ruined.
Did I mention Ari Hoenig’s DVD is incredible? So is Bireli Lagrene’s Live Jazz A Vienne from Dreyfus. Holidays are coming, folks.
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