Bad news arrived last week while I was out of town—the death of the pianist and composer Cedar Walton, at the age of seventy-nine. His name has always been a watermark of quality, and of particular qualities, for any recording he’s taken part in, as leader or sideman. Walton had a blend of power and swing, modesty and complexity, hearty tradition and fervent innovation. He joined the drummer Art Blakey’s sextet in 1961 and, together with the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and the tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, made it, for the next three years, one of the best ensembles in jazz. Shader Model 2.0 Free Download For Windows Xp. Blakey’s sheer force was joined to a true group concept—his younger band members composed works of a brooding intensity that joined modern post-bop modality (as pioneered by Miles Davis) to a bluesy, R. & B.-based feeling. The band’s music emerged with a ripping progressive edge and an exultation in sheer dark heat that sounded like the streets and distinguished it from more transcendent, conceptual, or restrained versions of modern jazz.

Instead, the trio seemed more linked to the new funk of James Brown and Motown. Walton’s was a live set, from August, 1961, that came out as part of the second volume of recordings called, drolly, “Three Blind Mice” (an with surprisingly un-jokey fervor)., from 1963, gives a clear sense of the band’s exhilarating level of intricate aggression—and also includes a long interlude, from the thirty-first through thirty-eighth minutes, devoted to Walton, who plays solo and in a trio with Blakey and the bassist Reggie Workman. Walton delivers a florid ballad that snaps into an irrepressible up-tempo bounce. At minute forty-six, he thrillingly pierces Blakey’s drum fury while adding another layer of tension to it.