Solal, Konitz, Scofield, Ørsted Pedersen - Four Keys (1980 Japanese MPS Vinyl LP)

Solal, Konitz, Scofield, Ørsted Pedersen - Four Keys | Vinyl LP - 1980 Japanese MPS Records (KUX-141-P, Teichiku Records)

• Seven Martial Solal compositions for a drummerless quartet, ranging from chamber-like miniatures to open group improvisation, recorded at the MPS studio in the Black Forest in May 1979
• Lee Konitz and Solal’s long partnership meets a 27-year-old John Scofield, three years before Scofield joined Miles Davis and already showing the harmonic restlessness that would define his career
• Recorded and produced by Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer at his home studio in Villingen, with the clarity and presence that made MPS one of the best-sounding jazz labels of its era

All seven pieces here are Martial Solal originals, and the programme plays to his strengths as a composer who trusted improvisation above formula. The quartet is pianoless in the conventional sense: Solal’s piano writing dissolves the usual comping role entirely, treating the instrument as a fourth melodic voice alongside Konitz’s alto, Scofield’s guitar and Ørsted Pedersen’s bass. There is no drummer and no one misses one. “Brain Stream” opens with a Latin undertow before Solal and Ørsted Pedersen take commanding solos, while Konitz and Scofield converge in tandem lines. “Satar” begins with each musician taking an unaccompanied statement in turn, and the closing title track finds all four locked into free collective improvisation that is pointedly controlled rather than chaotic. Solal had been playing with Konitz since 1968, and by 1979 their rapport was deep enough that neither needed to fill space. Scofield, barely known at this point, matches both of them.

The session was taped on May 8, 1979 at the MPS Tonstudio in Villingen, in Germany’s Black Forest. Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, who founded MPS and built the studio in his own home, served as both producer and recording engineer. The sound is characteristic of his best work: transparent, immediate, with each instrument occupying its own space in the stereo field. Solal was already among the most respected pianists in European jazz, the composer of Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle score and a player whose harmonic imagination Columbia producer George Avakian once described as “one of the most prodigious ever heard in jazz.” Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen had been a first-call European bassist since his teens, and was a regular presence at MPS alongside Oscar Peterson and Joe Pass. This 1980 Japanese pressing is manufactured by Teichiku Records Co., Ltd., who licensed the MPS catalogue for Japan. Catalogue number KUX-141-P.