Andrew Hill - Strange Serenade (Soul Note)

How many deaths will I have to address this year? Andrew Hill was special to me, and his work brings me comfort in a time when death seems more present than usual, given the flood of recent events, including his own passing; his 2000 album, Dusk, helped me toward a new appreciation of what can occur when improvisation and composition merge in the most creative hands. I wouldn’t hear Strange Serenade for another five years, but my reaction to this masterpiece was similar—dumbfounded admiration.

Recorded in Italy in 1980 along with Faces of Hope, his first studio work since the recently Mosaic-released California with Love sessions, Serenade sees a considerable upping of the ante, and Hill has the group to make it successful. Freddie Waits and Alan Silva are as sympathetic partners as Hill ever had, and nowhere is the group chemistry more evident than on the vast peaks, valleys and resonances of “Mist Flower.” Silva’s arco contributions are especially luminous as the piece draws to a close, his high-register harmonic reverberations augmenting Hill’s aphoristically coherent pianism. Every stroke Waits offers is well placed, transparent but pithy, a perfect complement to Silva’s pizzicato interjections.

Hill’s playing of the period is frustratingly verbiage-resistant. More and more, I hear it as terraced, almost baroque in phrase construction as heard in many current period-practice recordings; volume rises and falls suddenly while an overall sense of flow is somehow maintained. This paradox, true also for tempo, defines the title track and “Reunion,” two studies in controlled elasticity. The pieces are tonal while remaining mysterious, Hill’s unique approach to chromaticism seeing to that. Only “Flower” gets close to the abyss, as with the title track from Compulsion, charting territory he hadn’t explored for years.

Hill is spurred on by his cohorts, and he gives them plenty of impetus, resulting in a disc that has kept me coming back for two years and counting. There are so many jewels in Hill’s catalog, most of which is now available on CD again. He will be sorely missed, but it was gratifying to watch his resurgence and subsequent return to Blue Note in the final years of his life. RIP, Andrew.

~ Marc Medwin