Michel Legrand - Legrand Jazz (Remastered) (1958/2017) (SACD)

Academy and Grammy Award-winning composer/arranger Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Summer of ’42, The Thomas Crown Affair) was not a household name in America in 1958, but he was renowned among musicians and a life-long fanatic of American jazz and its players. Legrand Jazz is the result of Legrand traveling to America and using his Columbia Records contract to enlist label mates (and soon to be legends) Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Ben Webster, Hank Jones, Herbie Mann, Phil Woods, Donald Byrd, Art Farmer, Sheldon Powell, Teo Macero, Milt Hinton, Jimmy Cleveland, and others to record his fantastical reimagining of 11 jazz standards. Not merely content to lay down another Parisian hard-bop play-along, the 27 year old worked against type and expectations at every turn, creating a moody, idiosyncratic landscape for unusual call-and-response chase solos, washes of harp and vibes, and sultry horn canvases. Davis, Coltrane and the others manage to fall in with the diverse, mellow flow of Legrand’s arrangements while keeping their unique musical voices.

You may have heard–and possibly been disappointed by–a recent LP reissue of Legrand Jazz, but where that reissue was sourced from a poor digital copy source, Impex’s pristine new release was mastered by Chris Bellman and Bob Donnelly on Bernie Grundman’s All-Tube cutting lathe from Mark Wilder’s 2-track, all-analog mix down of the original studio work prints, then cut straight to a DSD high-resolution digital deck. The results are relevatory. The large recording space is captured in every detail, while Davis’ full-force dynamism pushes through with incredible veracity. The gentle ebb-and-flow of Legrand’s parts highlight microtonal fluctuations on every track. You are along for a magic carpet ride of large jazz ensemble recording when you press play on this amazing Super Audio Compact Disc. Even the hybrid CD layer is encoded with HDCD decoding, for superior fidelity on players which support the codec.

01 - The Jitterbug Waltz 5:20
Written-By - Thomas Waller
02 - Nuages 2:26
Written-By - Django Reinhardt
03 - Night In Tunisia 5:54
Written-By - John Gillespie, Frank Paparelli
04 - Blue And Sentimental 3:25
Written-By - William Count Basie, Jerry Livingston, Mack David
05 - Stompin' At The Savoy 3:53
Written-By - Andy Razaf, Benny Goodman, Chick Webb, Edgar M. Sampson
06 - Django 4:14
Written-By - John Lewis
07 - Wild Man Blues 3:22
Written-By - Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong
08 - Rosetta 7:16
Written-By - William Henri Woods
09 - 'Round Midnight 3:00
Written-By - Bernie Hanighen, Cootie Williams, Thelonious Monk
10 - Don't Get Around Much Anymore 2:36
Written-By - Duke Ellington, Sidney Keith Russell
11 - In A Mist 3:21
Written-By - Bix Beiderbecke