“Songs From My Father” from Gerry Gibbs is out tomorrow! Read the featured write-up from Associated Press

Gerry Gibbs is “fantastic” on upcoming release “Songs From My Father” available August 6!

Jul 20, 2021

The history of this project is very dramatic. The album, conceived as a tribute from his son – the father, the famous drummer and band leader of “The Thrasher” Gerry Gibbs – the 96-year-old legendary Terry Gibbs, who played with Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Art Blackie, Dizzy Gillespie etc., who composed more than 300 compositions, who recorded 65 solo albums and was the # 1 vibraphone player from 1950 to 1955 according to DownBeat and Metronome polls, turned into a double tribute with a very sad connotation. However, let’s go in order …

The double album Songs From My Father amazes with its monumentality. Gerry has selected 18 compositions from different years from the vast creative heritage of his father. Known for his signature Thrasher Dream Trio chamber ensembles, Jerry decided to entrust the performance of this music to several Thrasher Dream Trios, composed of the outstanding jazz musicians of our time. There are four of them in the album. Chick Corea and Ron Carter play in one with him, Kenny Barron and Buster Williams in the other, Patrice Rushen and Larry Goldings in the third (the only trio where a Hammond organ sounds instead of bass) and in the fourth – Jeff Keezer and Christian McBride. How do you like the team? In my opinion, just fantastic!

But what does it mean to implement such a project, and even in a covid year ?! Gerry Gibbs traveled half of America in ten months, coordinating the work schedules of the project participants in order to make these recordings. Terry’s old friend Chick Corea was especially inspired by the idea of ​​this tribute. He wrote the composition “Tango For Terry” specially for the album, which became the final track of the album, and also made arrangements for two more compositions. Gerry and Chick called up almost every week, discussed the progress of the project, and just talked “for life.” And then came the unexpected and black news of Chick Corea’s death. And it so happened that four pieces recorded for this album with his participation turned out to be the last lifetime recordings of this amazing musician …

Shocked by this tragedy, the project participants said goodbye to Corea with dignity. Gerry and his father jointly renamed Terry’s 1961 composition “Hey Jim” to “Hey Chick”, and it was jointly performed for the project by all eight of its members (each with a pair of choruses). In addition, Gerry also edited his father’s vibraphone solo from that old recording from the early 60s into this recording. This piece took a special place in the album, remarkable in all respects. If you love jazz, you just have to hear this unique work – and say goodbye to Chick Corea …

 

Review by

Leonid Auskern

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“Songs From My Father” from Gerry Gibbs is out tomorrow! Read the featured write-up from Associated Press

Gerry Gibbs “Songs From My Father” is coming on 8/6, featuring Chick Corea’s final recorded performance

Jul 13, 2021

Gerry Gibbs publishes Songs from my father with unreleased music by Chick Corea

Songs from my father is the highly anticipated new album from music scholar Gerry Gibbs. It is his thirteenth release as frontman, drummer, percussionist and bandleader, as well as arranger, Gibbs presents a two-disc masterpiece featuring four versions of his acclaimed trio that goes by the name Trasher Dream Trio.

Under his clever leadership, the band of jazz titans pay heartfelt tribute to the musical legacy of Gerry’s father, Terry Gibbs, one of the last living architects of be bop and innovators of the percussion instrument: the vibraphone.

For this purpose Gerry selected no more and no less than 18 melodies from his father’s vast discography and interpreted the material in a timeless way through his own compositional prism and lens, with ingenious and modern arrangements. Also Songs from my father has the last performance recorded with the great Chick Corea, piano genius who also passed away a few dates ago. It also includes one of the melodies Chick composed specifically for this project.

With Gibbs on drums, he has had the chance to record on this album with his stellar trios. Here you can enjoy excellent musicians such as Korea himself, Ron Carter, Kenny Barron, Buster Williams, Patrice Rushen, Larry Goldings, Geoff Keezer and Christian McBride.

A global pandemic could not stop this prolific jazz man, but rather, on the contrary, positively inspired him leaving an echo of an impressive season of creative production. Gibbs presents this album fresh from his epic 2019 work titled Our People, which defies the musical genre. Some critics defined it as “cleverly overlapping pieces that often come close to cinematic … quite a feat.”

We also had access to his previous 2020 Emotional Pandemic, an 18-track album entirely composed and performed by his own person. The 8 instruments. In fact, this was the launch that caught the attention of Chick Corea himself. Korea asked the drummer the process for recording all the instruments. That minimal conversation evolved into the possibility of collaboration and the concept was born: it was possible to release a double album as a result of collaborations with four amazing triso, including the aforementioned collaboration with Chick and Ron Carter.

In this state of affairs, later Korea asked to become even more deeply involved in work, in music. He composed an original piece under the title Tango For Terry, dedicated especially to Terry Gibbs and even arranging two pieces for the album.

Gibbs comments “What he wanted to do seemed almost impossible with the covid. There was a lot of fear, travel, safety precautions and logistics. How do 4 trios coordinate when a disease spreads all over the world and in the USA? That was the challenge and yet Gibbs saw the opportunity and did not give up organizing several trips to capture the sounds. Without a doubt, he has been worth it.

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