Art Pepper - 'An Afternoon in Norway: The Kongsberg Concert'

 

"Do not go gentle into that good night", Dylan Thomas wrote it and Art Pepper in his later years lived it.  In 1980, Art was 54; his health was poor, but his creativity was at its peak. 

'An Afternoon in Norway: The Kongsberg Concert' is a 2-CD set, that was recorded on June 29, 1980, at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Norway.  It was produced by the award-winning "Jazz Detective" Zev Feldman in collaboration with Laurie Pepper (Art's widow) and the Art Pepper Estate.  It was released on May 9, 2025, on the Elemental Music label.

Art Pepper's sound changed over the course of his career.  There was the cool almost Lee Konitz sound of the 1950s, through to the jagged John Coltrane influence in the 1960s to the driven, go-for-a-broke, passionate sound of his latter years.

Art toured almost constantly; by the 1980s he'd adopted an experimental dimension on-stage in his solos.  Art's backing band was Bulgarian pianist Milcho Leviev alongside bassist Tony Dumas and drummer Carl Burnett.  This quartet brought a deep-blue, hard-swinging, intuitive approach to loosely frame Art's playing, and is a master class in accompaniment.

An Afternoon in Norway: The Kongsberg Concert picks up the afternoon after a show at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London ended at 1:30 a.m., and they were whisked to Norway, without time to sleep, in order to make this afternoon set as the closing act at Norway's Konigsberg Jazz Festival.

You know how some double albums feel like an eternity to get through?  This one is just the opposite, it's so enjoyable that the next thing you know it's over.

For the freeload, what are some of your favorite double albums?