The Modern Jazz Quartet - The Last Concert (1975 Japanese Atlantic Gatefold 2LP)

Vinyl: EX/EX
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: VG+

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The Modern Jazz Quartet - The Last Concert | Vinyl 2LP - 1975 Japanese Atlantic Gatefold (P-6321-2A, manufactured by Warner-Pioneer Corporation)

The Modern Jazz Quartet emerged in 1952 from the rhythm section of Dizzy Gillespie's big band, but spent the next two decades pulling jazz in a direction nobody else had tried. John Lewis, the pianist and musical director, wanted to apply Bach and Renaissance counterpoint to the blues. Milt Jackson, the most lyrical vibraphonist alive, wanted to swing. The tension between those two impulses defined the group. Percy Heath's bass and Connie Kay's restrained, jewel-like drumming completed a unit so locked-in it was effectively chamber music in a tuxedo. By the time they walked off the Avery Fisher stage on 25 November 1974, they had been together as a quartet for almost two decades. The setlist is a deliberate retrospective: their own pieces ("Django", "Skating in Central Park", "The Cylinder", "Blues in A Minor"), Lewis' commissioned music for Roger Vadim's Sait-on jamais film score ("One Never Knows", "The Golden Striker"), Jackson's signature blues "Bags' Groove", and the bebop they were raised on (Parker's "Confirmation", Gillespie's "Night in Tunisia", Monk's "'Round Midnight").

What was billed as a farewell turned out to be a seven-year intermission. The group reunited in 1981 and kept performing until Milt Jackson's death in 1999, but neither the comeback nor the more extensive Complete Last Concert 2CD that Atlantic compiled in 1988 diminishes what this original 1975 2LP represents. The set was recorded as a deliberate document of an ending, and the playing carries that weight. This is the contemporary Japanese pressing, manufactured by Warner-Pioneer Corporation under Atlantic's Japanese licence in the same year as the US issue.