The Modern Jazz Quartet - Fontessa (1976 Japanese Atlantic Vinyl LP Mono)

The Modern Jazz Quartet - Fontessa | Vinyl LP Mono - 1976 Japanese Atlantic Reissue (P-7517A, Warner-Pioneer Corporation)

The MJQ started as a way of giving Dizzy Gillespie's brass section a rest. Lewis, Jackson, Ray Brown and Kenny Clarke would play short sets while the big band caught its breath, and by 1952 they had left to work under their own name. Three Prestige years followed, then Percy Heath replaced Brown and Connie Kay replaced Clarke, and the group arrived at Atlantic in 1956 with the lineup that would hold until Jackson walked away in 1974. Kay was a substantially different drummer from Clarke: lighter, more focused on brushes and cymbals, less inclined to drop bombs, and that shift gave the quartet the room it needed for the quiet interplay that became its signature. Ertegun already knew him from Atlantic's R&B sessions, including Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll." Fontessa is where the group's method settles into place. Lewis writes the extended material and directs the group's classical leanings, Jackson supplies the blues and the heat, and the tension between those two impulses is the whole point.

"Versailles" opens with the fugue-like counterpoint Lewis was drawn to, and "Angel Eyes" is a ballad reading that gives Jackson space to state the melody slowly. The title piece takes eleven minutes and moves from a sombre, almost liturgical opening into a relaxed swing, with each of the four musicians representing one of the commedia characters pictured on the sleeve. Side B is the more conventional half. "Over the Rainbow" and "Willow Weep for Me" are both ballads, the latter a tune Jackson had first recorded five years earlier with Thelonious Monk. "Bluesology" is Jackson's own, and became a permanent part of the group's book. "Woody'n You" closes the album, a Gillespie composition that Lewis, Jackson and Heath had all played in his band and could handle without thinking, and it is the hardest-swinging thing here. The sessions were split between a New York studio and Van Gelder's room in Englewood Cliffs, with John Kraus and Van Gelder sharing the engineering.

This is the December 1976 Japanese pressing on Atlantic P-7517A, from the Pick Up Your Music / Jazz-Forever Excellent series, made by Warner-Pioneer Corporation in a US legacy sleeve printed in Japan.