{"id":41325,"date":"2009-01-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/river-the-joni-letters\/"},"modified":"2009-01-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-21T00:00:00","slug":"river-the-joni-letters","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/river-the-joni-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"River: The Joni Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Herbie Hancock\u2019s River: The Joni Letters<\/i> won Album Of The Year at the 2008 Grammy Awards, the music establishment was in shock.\u00a0 Naysayers griped about how this was the right artist for the wrong year.\u00a0 Some wondered how the National Academy Of Recording Arts And Sciences could ignore the powerhouses of Amy Winehouse and Kanye West while picking an older, adventurous jazz artist to win its most prestigious award.\u00a0 And Hancock graciously accepted the award while honoring two of his idols — Miles Davis and John Coltrane.\u00a0 But amidst the tripe and chatter, one thing remains clear: this album is amazing.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

River: The Joni Letters <\/i>contains mostly Joni Mitchell compositions, save \u201cSolitude\u201d (Edgar De Lange, Duke Ellington and Irving Mills) and Nefertiti (Wayne Shorter), two of Mitchell\u2019s favorite jazz songs.\u00a0 The message is clear.\u00a0 Like the greatest composers of old, from Bach to Mingus to the Gershwins, Mitchell\u2019s compositions should be held in high regard for being forever relevant and beautifully melodic while containing endless interpretive possibilities.\u00a0 To show this, Hancock and producer Larry Klein assembled some of the world\u2019s greatest living musicians (Hancock on piano, Wayne Shorter on soprano and tenor saxophone, Dave Holland on bass, Vinnie Colaiuta on drums and Lionel Loueke on guitar) and vocalists (Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Corinne Bailey Rae, Joni Mitchell, Luciana Souza and Leonard Cohen) to weave together some of Mitchell\u2019s most fruitful compositions.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

River <\/i>can be described many ways.\u00a0 It is experimental.\u00a0 Hancock and crew play with extended intros, melodically sparse improvisation, group interaction and dense harmonic qualities, making this a far cry from mainstream.\u00a0 It is compositional.\u00a0 Not only does the source material contain a mature, almost feng shui, <\/i>sense of movement, but Hancock and Klein paid close attention to arrangement, juxtaposing silence and instrumental layers to create a vast musical landscape.\u00a0 Take, for instance, Hancock\u2019s Debussy-esque intro to the Norah Jones vocalized \u201cCourt And Spark\u201d or the esoteric piano harmonies over a pedaled (single) bass note during Shorter\u2019s solo in \u201cTea Leaf Prophecy.\u201d\u00a0 These arrangements are daring, fascinating and highly original.\u00a0 Lastly, it is lyrical.\u00a0 The band purposely creates sounds that reflect the songs\u2019 lyrical content.\u00a0 For example, when Corinne Bailey Rae sings \u201cI wish I had a river \/ I could skate away on\u201d on the album\u2019s title track \u201cRiver,\u201d Hancock and Shorter play counter-melodies that reflect both a sense of skating and the feeling of discontent evident in the words.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Most importantly, though, River <\/i>is a jazz album, in the truest sense, that equals Hancock\u2019s greatest works.\u00a0 It has a thematic acuity rarely seen.\u00a0 Its improvised solos are sparse and melodic while the songs are pensive and brooding reflections on the saddened soul.\u00a0 The album is as groundbreaking and enjoyable as Hancock\u2019s Maiden Voyage,<\/i> Headhunters, <\/i>and his 1962 debut Takin\u2019 Off.\u00a0 River<\/i> is a breathtaking emotional experience and a grand artistic achievement for an artist who has spent over forty years pushing musical boundaries.\u00a0 Plus, it\u2019s pretty hip that he finally won Album Of The Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":29720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7037],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-41325","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-herbie-hancock","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41325"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41325"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}