Biography | Tour Dates | Reviews

CD022: The story behind None But The Lonely Heart is as striking as the music itself. Pianist Chris Anderson, born in Chicago in 1926, has played with the likes of Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt, despite the twin afflictions of blindness and a brittle bone condition, so how is it that he is a completely new name to me? My ignorance seems to be shared by all British jazz reference books and, until this session, by recording engineer Ken Christianson. However, double bass supremo Charlie Haden has known and loved his playing for 40 years: hence this recording. Influences on Anderson range from Chicago Blues to Debussy and Ravel - who are recalled in the unexpected harmonies and beautiful voicings of soulful standards like The Night We Called It A Day and It Never Entered My Head. The title song does not appear in its own right, but emerges as a dramatic final statement on Nobody's Heart. The blues element surfaces on CC Blues, with a hint of Art Hodes The Jazz Rag May/June 1998

CD022: A pianist in his seventies, admired by insiders but little known to the public outside his native Chicago, Chris Anderson gnaws at the harmonic contours of a tune rather like a less abrasive Thelonious Monk. If he doesn't have Barrons's polish, his deceptively diffident approach to familiar songs forces Haden to look at them afresh. Common to both albums. for instance, is Body And Soul: supremely lyrical in the Haden-Barron version; unpredictable and vaguely disquieting in the other. Ronald Atkins, The Guardian Friday April 24th 1998.

CD022: Pianist Chris Anderson is lauded on the sleeve of this duo album as one of the great unsung heroes of jazz - he tutored Herbie Hancock, toured with Dinah Washington, but his blindness and ill health militated against wider public acceptance and his subtle, understated grace is everywhere in evidence on this recording, made at New York's Cami Hall in July 1997. His is an open- eared, chord-based technique, rather than one relying on sparkling single-note runs, and the routes he plots through such classics as "Good Morning Heartache", "It Never Entered My Mind" and even "Body and Soul" will delight anyone excited by harmonic adventurousness. Haden has a great ear for pianistic virtuosity - witness his championing of Gonzalo Rubalcaba - and plays bass with his customary elegance throughout this intriguing album. CP, JAZZWISE April 1998

CD022:  "This is the best recording of the acoustic bass I have ever heard" Dirk Sommer - Image Hi-Fi Germany

CD022: "Charlie's album with Pat Metheny, " Under Missouri Skies" was a joy, and so this CD is in an honourable and successful line...here are two musical explorers both curious and brave" David Freeman, Jazz FM

CD077: Piano/bass duos used to be two a penny in the days when new York licensing laws turned a blind eye to two in a bar ensembles. So quite a few eminent players worked in such pairings back in the 70s and 80s, and quite a repertoire built up. Nowadays, venues like the Cookery and the Kitchen are long gone, and having become far more scarce, this particular type of ensemble is more usually to be found in concert halls, such as the Roy O Disney venue in Valencia, California, where this charming set of duets was recorded. It ranks with the best of the piano/bass duos I've heard, and the disc's warm recording quality puts you in direct aural contact with Haden and Taylor. Charlie's huge rounded bass tone takes his basslines in unexpected directions, which John's melodic imagination feeds off, giving the feeling of a joint discovery, despite the relatively safe melodic and harmonic context of most of the pieces. Both players leave plenty of space for their notes to breathe, nowhere better than on the delightful "My Love and I", and Apache love song (from nearby Hollywood) that's full of dark, brooding romance. Jazzwise April 2004

CD077: The reputation of John Taylor, the great British jazz pianist, should have spread further sooner - but since he passed his 60th birthday a couple of years ago, his stock on the international jazz scene seems to have steadily risen. This duo set finds him paired with one of the legends of free jazz double bass, Charlie Haden. The playing has a fragile power and these two vastly experienced improvisers listen to each other in a manner finely poised between respectful distance and quietly impassioned intimacy. Haden's eastern-inflected Chairman Mao brings astonishingly harmonious and apposite string-plucking interventions from Taylor, and the latter is in his most inventive mood-on the Haden ballad of the title. A morning-mist of a Native American love song sits alongside Taylor's own Au Contraire, the softly swinging and progressively diversifying Windfall, and a William Walton adaptation that sounds almost indistinguishable from a Bill Evans composition in Taylor's hands. Haden's eerie low arco sound on his own Song for the Whales gives way to the Broadway-ballad feel of Bittersweet, and the dignified meditation of Silence.