Andrew Hill
The Great African-American Classical Art-Form
The Great African-American Classical Art-Form
Composer- Pianist, Andrew Hill, was an African-American Classical Art-Form pianist and composer. Hill is recognized as one of the most important innovators of so-called jazz piano in the 1960s. His most-lauded work was recorded for Blue Note Records, spanning nearly a decade and a dozen albums.
Born: June 30, 1931, Chicago, IL
Died: April 20, 2007, Jersey City, NJ
Last album: Dreams Come True
Education: Colgate University.
Hill's; piano technique is infused with Thelonious Monk’s percussive approach and Bud Powell’s fluid bebop lines, even when Hill loosens such approaches from their original harmonic underpinnings. Features of Hill’s style include shifting tempos and meters, expressive dissonances, percussive chords, and angular melodic lines with elastic rhythmic phrasing. Tonality is maintained to various degrees in his melodic gestures, chord voicing's, and formal periodicity, even when such devices are placed in quasi-tonal or even non-tonal environments. Hill’s compositions tend to be well-conceived road maps, with specific (and quite taxing) parts and roles assigned and a definite sense of harmonic direction and climax.
Smoke Stack:
Blue Note 4160
Andrew Hill (p) Richard Davis (b)
Eddie Khan (b) Roy Haynes (d)
Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, December 13, 1963
