Getz Swinging Hard in the City of Light
Four musicians at the top of their game, playing with the ease of people who've done this a thousand times.
This album sat in the can for fourteen years before anyone heard it. Recorded live in Paris in 1982, it didn't surface until 1996 on Dreyfus Jazz, arriving without fanfare into a market that had largely moved on from the straightahead quartet format. It found no major critical momentum on release — which says more about timing and industry indifference than the music itself. What's here is a masterclass in what happens when four virtuosos trust each other completely. Stan Getz on tenor, Gary Burton on vibraphone, Steve Swallow on bass, and Roy Haynes on drums move through standards and original material with the kind of telepathic ease that only comes from years of playing together. There's no wasted motion, no one trying to prove anything. Haynes anchors everything with that perfectly placed pocket of his, Swallow walks with absolute clarity underneath, and Burton and Getz trade ideas like they're having a conversation that started years ago and never stopped.
This is late-period Getz, which means the tone is warm and slightly smoky, not the crisp bop articulation of his youth. He's listening more, playing less — but what comes out matters. The vibraphone adds a thoughtful texture that keeps things from settling into pure swing; Burton was always better at suggesting harmonic color than trading speed runs. Nothing here sounds urgent or competitive. It's the sound of players who've already proved themselves moving past the need to impress.
Not an essential starting point for Getz — that would be Focus (1961) or his earlier Blue Note sessions. But if you've spent time with his core catalog and want to hear what he sounded like in a working quartet near the end of his career, this delivers exactly that. It's valuable specifically because it's unpretentious: four people playing well, recorded live, released without mythology.
Who's playing
Where next?
More by Stan Getz
All 36 albums →
The musicians on this record
Native Sense: The New Duets 1997
Gary Burton
plays vibraphone here
plays vibraphone here
Wanton Spirit 1994
Roy Haynes
plays drums (drum set) here
plays drums (drum set) here
Deconstructed 1997
Steve Swallow
plays bass here
plays bass here
