Jazz Detective to Release Final Jamal Album

Ahmad Jamal on the cover of his final Emerald City Nights album

Almost exactly a year ago, the Jazz Detective label produced by Zev Feldman released two albums sharing the title Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse. These were trio performances led by master jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal. The first had the “subtitle” 1963–1964, and the second was 1965–1966. This Friday this series will be completed with the release of the 1966–1968 album; and, as of this writing, the hyperlink for the date can be used for pre-ordering the album.

The new release accounts for sessions on September 29, 1966, August 24, 1967, August 31, 1967, and April 26, 1968. The Penthouse is the club in Seattle where all of the recordings were made. For all four of these sets, the other trio members were Jamil Nasser on bass and Frank Gant on drums.

As was the case in the earlier releases, the repertoire is widely diverse. However, each genre seems to provide Jamal with its own potential for extended improvisations. This is as evident in his approach to Erroll Garner’s “Misty” as it is for the theme for the television series Mr. Lucky, one of Henry Mancini’s early ventures into commercial television. One of the things that strikes me about such “popular standards” is that Jamal and his colleagues almost always depart from any expectations we may have about those tunes. For example, Garner’s moody qualities are all but obliterated by Gant’s aggressive and complex drumming.

Now that the series is complete, one has to marvel at the breadth of inventiveness that cuts across the many sets that were recorded. Indeed, Jamal is probably one of the best examples of my favorite epithet that “jazz is chamber music by other means.” Over the course of my writing gig, I have never turned down an opportunity to cover one of Jamal’s recordings. Each one has had its own journey (or journeys) of discovery; and I have to confess to more that a bit of regret that I was on the other side of the continent when Jamal was cooking up so much engaging diversity in Seattle.