Mal Waldron

This was recorded inside the Palais d’Orsay Hotel in Paris on March 10, 1970. The city’s International Sound Festival was being held at the time, and this recording was aired in the “Jazz Vivant” radio show presented by André Francis. The performance here is a first on record, and it captures the renaissance of pianist Mal Waldron, fronting a trio comprised of drummer Christian Vander (co-founder of the group Magma) and bassist Jean-François Catoire (a long-time partner of Vander). Waldron’s career was reviving after his European exile, a lengthy hiatus tied to his patient process of reconstruction after years spent fighting his addiction.

In 1969 he recorded Free at Last for the brand-new ECM label (it was their very first production) and two years later he would do the same for the Enja label. Before that, in 1970, he had also toured in Japan for the first time, and it would make him instantly popular there.

Before the present concert recorded on March 10, 1970, Mal Waldron had appeared the previous year (a summer gig) in a club at Antibes, the Early Bird, playing with the same comrades, namely Christian Vander and Jean-François Catoire. Many critics had praised that trio’s quality in the media, and the late Maurice Cullaz, a great admirer of Waldron, even went so far as to say he had “rarely heard these three musicians play in such an extraordinary manner.”

So it was quite logical, when the trio got together again in March in Paris, that the same cohesion would be apparent in their opening tune “Rat Now,” a theme that had appeared on the Free at Last album recorded for ECM (November 1969) only four months before this concert. The pianist plays throughout in his characteristic style, the left hand accentuating a constant undertow while his right hand releases a controlled energy. Christian Vander’s unbridled percussion gives a free dimension to this tune, which lends a kind of austerity that shows the fundamental influence that the great Thelonious Monk had wielded over Waldron’s piano style, alongside that of Bud Powell: ”After I fell into the depths, I couldn’t find the lyrical side of my playing again. The way I expressed myself had become more dense; it had refocused itself more.” That legacy is even more palpable in the tune that follows, “Champs Elysées,” a composition from the album Impressions (1959). The melody lines, impregnated by the blues, mingle gleefully with the whirling figures provided by Mal and his partners.