1982 · Album
Master of the Art
Recorded February 25, 1982 · Elektra/Musician · Produced by Information not verified — omitted
One Night, Two Albums, All Shaw
Shaw was playing at the peak of his powers that February night, and the tape proves it.
Here is something worth knowing upfront: Woody Shaw recorded two separate albums on the same night — February 25, 1982, at the Jazz Forum in New York City. Master of the Art (1982) is one half of that evening; Night Music (1982) is the other. That kind of productivity from a single club date says something about where Shaw was as a bandleader at the time. He was not coasting. He was cooking, and someone was smart enough to keep the tape rolling.
What you get here is Shaw in a live small-group setting, which is frankly where his trumpet playing makes the most sense. He was a player who drew from hard bop and pushed it somewhere else — not quite post-bop, not free, but with more harmonic restlessness than most of his contemporaries were willing to commit to on a bandstand. His tone was full and direct, and he had this habit of approaching a melodic idea from an unexpected angle and then landing it perfectly. Live recordings catch that quality better than studio dates because there is no second take, no fixing it in the mix. What he plays here, he means.
If you are new to Shaw, this is not necessarily the first place to start — his studio work from the late 1970s on Columbia gives you a more produced introduction. But if you already know those records and want to hear how he actually functioned in a room in front of people, this is the album. The Jazz Forum setting keeps things close and immediate. Both this record and Night Music came out on the Elektra/Musician label, which was doing serious work supporting jazz in the early 1980s. Pick one, then get the other.
Who's playing
Stafford Jamesdouble bass
Mulgrew Millerpiano
Steve Turretrombone
Tony Reedusdrums
Bobby Hutchersonvibraphone
Woody Shawbrass
Where next?
More by Woody Shaw
All 36 albums →
The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
