(Mainstream Jazz, Post-Bop) [CD] Peter Bernstein - Signs LIVE! (2CD) (with Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride & Gregory Hutchinson) - 2017, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/peter-bernstein-mn0000317924/biography
Artist Biography by William Ruhlmann
Jazz guitarist Peter Bernstein was born September 3, 1967, in New York City. He got his first break while attending the New School when he met Jim Hall, who recruited him for a concert of guitarists as part of the 1990 JVC Jazz Festival in New York. The show was recorded by MusicMasters and issued as Live at Town Hall, Vol. 2. Bernstein quickly began playing with other jazz musicians, notably appearing on albums by Lou Donaldson, Michael Hashim, Larry Goldings, Mel Rhyne, Jesse Davis, and Geoff Keezer. He recorded his first album as a leader, Somethin's Burnin', for Criss Cross on December 22, 1992, as part of quartet with Brad Mehldau (piano), John Webber (bass), and Jimmy Cobb (drums). After working with such artists as Patti Page, Walt Weiskopf, Brian Lynch, Laverne Butler, Eric Alexander, and Hendrik Meurkens in 1993-1994, he issued his second solo album, Signs of Life, on May 2, 1995, working again with Mehldau, along with Christian McBride (bass) and Gregory Hutchinson (drums). Further work as a sideman with Ghetto Philharmonic, Trudy Desmond, Teodross Avery, Joshua Redman, Kevin Mahogany, Grant Stewart, and Mike LeDonne preceded the release of his third album, Brain Dance, on June 24, 1997. This time, he led a quintet also containing Goldings (organ), Eric Alexander (tenor saxophone), Steve Davis (trombone), and Billy Drummond (drums). Prior to his fourth album, Earth Tones, Bernstein recorded with Ralph Lalama and Eric Comstock, among others. Earth Tones, issued August 25, 1998, found him fronting a trio with Goldings and Bill Stewart (drums).
Five years elapsed before the release of Heart's Content, Bernstein's fifth album as a leader, and he occupied the time working with a wide variety of musicians including Tom Aalfs, Group 15, Jimmy Cobb's Mob, David Bubba Brooks, Doug Lawrence, Sam Yahel, David Morgan, Jon Gordon, Michael Karn, Spike Wilner, Anna Lauvergnac, Harry Allen, Paula West, Nicholas Payton, Etta Jones, Béla Szakcsi Lakatos, Lee Konitz, Klaus Doldinger, and Ralph Bowen. Heart's Content, which was released May 27, 2003, was credited to "Peter Bernstein + 3," and the three were Mehldau, Bill Stewart, and Larry Grenadier (bass). The same year the album appeared, Bernstein could be heard on albums by Ryan Kisor, Wycliffe Gordon, Janis Siegel, and Martin Sasse, among others. Stranger in Paradise, Bernstein's sixth album, was released June 8, 2004, by the Japanese Tokuma label, and employed the same lineup as that on Heart's Content. In addition to musicians with whom he had recorded before, Bernstein appeared on albums by Jim Rotondi and Dr. Lonnie Smith in 2004 and Kathy Kosins in 2005. On August 23, 2005, Mel Bay released the DVD Peter Bernstein Trio Live at Smoke, taped at a jazz club on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Among his many sideman sessions in the mid-2000s, Bernstein added dates with Joe Magnarelli, Alvin Queen, Planet Jazz, Anton Schwartz, John Pisano, David "Fathead" Newman, Don Friedman, Cory Weeds, and Andrew Suvalsky to the list of his credits, along with repeat appearances with others. On January 13, 2009, the newly reactivated Xanadu label released Bernstein's seventh album, Monk, a tribute to Thelonious Monk featuring all Monk compositions. Although Monk was a pianist, of course, the Bernstein recording was made with a pianoless trio consisting of himself, Doug Weiss (bass), and Bill Stewart.

"Everyone is hard to get," Peter Bernstein says, underscoring the logistical difficulties of convening Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride and Greg Hutchinson at the beginning of 2015 for a three-night weekend run at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the final night of which is documented on the album contained herein. The engagement transpired 20 years and two weeks after the group's first encounter—a low maintenance recording date in 1994 that generated an excellent Bernstein-led Criss Cross date titled Signs of Life.
"It took me that long to bring these guys back together for the record release party," the 49-year-old guitarist jokes. "We never played a gig. I tried a few times, and it didn't line up."
It was worth the wait. Over the course of two and a half hours, this quartet of Gen-X modern masters, each functioning at the peak of their creative powers, stretch out collectively on nine Bernstein originals and on Thelonious Monk's "Pannonica" and "We See," the latter segued into after the leader's a cappella reading, spare and aphoristic, of "Crepuscule with Nellie."
Throughout the proceedings, Bernstein plays with characteristic lucidity, deliberate, graceful phrasing and deep swing. He tells his stories with the orotund, centered tone that has marked his musical voice since 1990, when he made the first of many albums with organist Larry Goldings and drummer Bill Stewart, and his 1992 leader debut, Somethin's Burnin', with Jimmy Cobb, Mehldau, and John Webber (reprised for Smoke Sessions on the Cobb's 2014 re-cording, The Original Mob), not to mention consequential sideman appearances with old-schoolers like Lou Donaldson, Dr. Lonnie Smith and Melvin Rhyne.
"I was influenced by singers and horn players," Bernstein says. "Guitar lacks the element of breathing and speaking, so it's easy to be a typewriter and just play notes until you run out of string. Listening to horn players made me focus on trying to get that in my playing."
Among this date's many pleasures is the opportunity to hear Mehldau address the sideman function. He devotes full attention to the art of the comp, orchestrating, locking in with the bass and drums, suggesting and responding to Bernstein's ideas with nuance and panache. He also offers a series of efflorescent solos, one more vertiginous than the next, at one moment channeling his early influence, Wynton Kelly, with fluid, pellucid single-note lines strung together with the elegance of pearls on a necklace, then launching spontaneous contrapuntal inventions that showcase his harmonic acuity, rhythmic independence, and velocity of thought.
Throughout the proceedings, McBride carves out the spot-on, swinging, meat-and-potatoes basslines that impressed both elders and peers during the years leading up to Signs of Life, when he was playing with New York's finest pianists at Bradley's, or in Super Bass with his mentor, Ray Brown, or in Joshua Redman's quartets with Pat Metheny and Billy Higgins or with Mehldau and Brian Blade. Now, as then, it's his default basis of operation to anticipate every harmonic and rhythmic shift in the dialogue, with a set-your-clock-to-it time feel, spot-on intonation, and a catgut thwonk at any tempo. It goes without saying that McBride applies these attributes when conjuring show-stealing solos in which he places his horn-like agility, abiding melodicism, and abundant soulfulness at the service of the songs in question.
Back in 1994, Bernstein recalls, "Christian and I knew each other. I'd seen him at Bradley's, and sat in with him a few times—once in particular at the Vanguard when he was just starting his group with Anthony Wonsey, Hutch and Tim Warfield." He'd first met Hutchinson—then a 24-year-old acolyte of Philly Joe Jones and Kenny Washington, he'd graduated with honors from the schools of Red Rodney and Betty Carter, and had recently joined the Roy Hargrove Quintet—in a Monday night band led by the legendary bebop alto saxophonist C. Sharpe at Zanzibar, a Murray Hill boite where Bernstein used to play Sunday brunch with saxophonist Arnie Lawrence, who founded the New School jazz program.
The New School for Social Research is where Bernstein and Mehldau met in the fall of 1989. "Jesse Davis and Larry Goldings were there, too, and we all became friends, listening to all kinds of music. Brad and I used to play in a class that Jimmy Cobb taught, called 'Rhythmic Development.' We started doing gigs with Jimmy and John Webber at the Village Gate and other places. That resulted in my first record on Criss Cross. "I was in awe of Brad's natural gift, his ears, his sensitivity, and complete musicality" says Bernstein.
That the feeling was mutual is apparent in Mehldau's booklet notes to Heart's Content, Bernstein's 2003 quartet release for Criss Cross. "Peter came to personify an ethos that I associate with my favorite players who reside in New York," Mehldau wrote. After describing that ethos as "a collection of deeply felt sentiments about jazz music that form the basis for a broad range of possible styles," Mehldau clarified: "Those sentiments include the importance of melody at all times in whatever you're expressing, which means playing phrases that have a shape to them and not just running licks... At his core, there's a deep integrity and honesty; he doesn't look for easy answers that don't ring true in the long run. That really carries over into his playing. The music that he offers the listener is always something that he's carried within himself first, and then loved into being."
How firmly each of these four protagonists embodies the values that Mehldau described is palpable in the collective chemistry they display on the 2015 encounter and on Signs of Life, a mostly one-take session on which they addressed five Bernstein originals and four standards. "The tunes were straight-ahead; we were playing them at the Village Gate," Bernstein says. "Not much over-thinking was involved. I've always mixed originals and standards. If I don't play my tunes, nobody will, so why not record them?"
Did Signs of Life in any way represent jazz expression circa 1994 among Bernstein's contemporaries and peers? "I think it represents the fact that there were cats trying to come out of the tradition of swinging and interpreting tunes from the worlds of jazz and American popular song and blues, and play what we thought was jazz music," he responds. "Also, I was and still am trying not to be what Lester Young called 'a repeater pencil.' It's nice if someone says they hear your influence, but the goal is to be your own person, your own synthesis of influences. Twenty-two years ago I was a long way from even approaching that synthesis. But being in the company of really strong players who were well on their way (if not already there) to becoming musical identities themselves, helped me focus and play stronger. It wasn't about pretending it's 1952 or 1965 or whatever, but just trying to play where we were at. We loved Bird. We loved Miles' Four and More group. We loved everything going back to Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. At the same time, we weren't being overly conscious that it's 1994, and
we have to play current tunes from the radio, or Stevie Wonder and the Beatles. Some people were more consciously dealing with contemporary rhythms and contemporary sounds, and that was cool. We were all in it together. When I played in bands that were trying to do a certain genre thing beyond jazz, I would try my best to play to the nature of the composition.
"It's a conservative record by the standards of what other people were doing. I was trying to write tunes within different forms like the blues, not necessarily to reinvent anything. Sometimes I felt self-conscious about it. But as you get older, you go more by instinct. You play more to your strengths, learning what you do better and what you don't. At the same time, you're also trying to stretch, and play with people who stretch you, to enter situations where you have to play outside yourself and beyond yourself.
Circa 2015, Bernstein incorporated these experiences into the repertoire that he presented to his exemplary partners. "I wanted to record some newer tunes as well as some we'd played on Signs of Life," he says. One of the new ones, "Hidden Pockets," he describes as "a tune with a lot of changes that move around in different keys-it's challenging to play on, but you write things that make you play different stuff." The other pieces of more recent vintage are "Useless Metaphor," with "odd phrases and its own little flow"; "Let Loose," whose ostinato bassline evokes the world of McCoy Tyner and Bobby Hutcherson; "Resplendor," an elongated form ballad with suspended chords that evoke Wayne Shorter and Billy Strayhorn; and "All Too Real," a fast, long-form blues."
From Signs of Life are "Blues For Bulgaria," on which Bernstein postulates a melody refracted from recordings of the Bulgarian Women's Choir ("I was trying to write an odd-meter tune, but it came out as a 24-bar blues in F-sharp") and "Jive Coffee," which is "Tea For Two" reimagined in the 5/4 space. "Cupcake" is a "shuffly, 12/8 reworking" of "Carrot Cake," which Bernstein previously recorded with Goldings and Stewart on Earth Tones. Also from Earth Tones is "Dragonfly," inspired by Donaldson's "The Scorpion," which proceeds to a "straight-eighth, Idris Muhammad beat."
As for the Monk tunes, Bernstein, who played piano before taking up guitar, calls himself a lifelong fan. "The qualities of humor and lyricism and courage and irreverence come through his music—plus, his tunes are so great," he says. "Each song demands you play its character; you can't just play the song and then run your stuff."
Though Bernstein finds it torturous to listen back to his recordings, he's happy that the belated record release party has itself been released. "This was a good bunch of guys to get together 20 years ago, and what worked then works now," he says. "It's nice we're still here doing it. You can't take that for granted. The gig went down pretty well. People seemed to enjoy the music. That's what I take away from it." His modest remark understates the impact of this momentous encounter. Hopefully, we won't have to wait two decades—or even a year—for the next one.
TED PANKEN

Peter Bernstein – guitar
Brad Mehldau – piano
Christian McBride – bass
Gregory Hutchinson – drums