''Blue Moses'' is an album by American jazz pianist and composer
Randy Weston
Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston (April 6, 1926 – September 1, 2018) was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection.
Weston's piano style owed much to Duke Ellington and Thelonious M ...
featuring performances recorded in 1972 and released on the
CTI label.
[CTI Records discography](_blank)
Retrieved February 20, 2012.
Reception
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
states: "Recorded in 1972, ''Blue Moses'', the most commercially successful album in pianist/composer Randy Weston's catalog remains one of his most controversial due to his conflicted feelings about the final product, which he feels is too polished and too far from his original intent for the project. Indeed, appearing on
Creed Taylor
Creed Bane Taylor V (May 13, 1929 – August 22, 2022) was an American record producer, best known for his work with CTI Records, which he founded in 1967. His career also included periods at Bethlehem Records, ABC-Paramount Records (including ...
's CTI imprint was an almost certain guarantee of polished production.... No matter how Weston ultimately feels about ''Blue Moses'', this date succeeds on all levels. Creating a commercially viable recording from the elements presented must not have been easy, but Taylor rose to the occasion and delivered a grooving beauty of an album without compromising Weston's genius".
[Jurek, Thom]
AllMusic Review
Retrieved February 20, 2012.
Track listing
All compositions by Randy Weston.
# "Ifrane" – 5:16
# "Ganawa (Blue Moses)" – 12:29
# "Night in Medina" – 6:50
# "Marrakesh Blues" – 12:17
*Recorded at
Van Gelder Studio
The Van Gelder Studio is a recording studio at 445 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, United States. Following the use of his parents' home at 25 Prospect Avenue, Hackensack, New Jersey, for the original studio, Rudy Van Gelder (1924– ...
in
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Englewood Cliffs is a borough in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, whose population at the 2010 United States census was 5,281.[Randy Weston
Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston (April 6, 1926 – September 1, 2018) was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection.
Weston's piano style owed much to Duke Ellington and Thelonious M ...]
–
electric piano
An electric piano is a musical instrument which produces sounds when a performer presses the keys of a piano-style musical keyboard. Pressing keys causes mechanical hammers to strike metal strings, metal reeds or wire tines, leading to vibrations ...
*
Freddie Hubbard
Frederick Dewayne Hubbard (April 7, 1938 – December 29, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter. He played bebop, hard bop, and post-bop styles from the early 1960s onwards. His unmistakable and influential tone contributed to new perspectives fo ...
– trumpet
*John Frosk,
Alan Rubin
Alan Rubin (February 11, 1943 – June 8, 2011), also known as Mr. Fabulous, was an American musician. He played trumpet, flugelhorn, and piccolo trumpet.
Early life and education
Rubin was born in Brooklyn. He began attending Juilliard Sc ...
,
Marvin Stamm
Marvin Louis Stamm (born May 23, 1939) is an American jazz trumpeter.
Career
Stamm was born in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Stamm began on trumpet at age twelve. He attended North Texas State University, where he was a member of the One O ...
– trumpet,
flugelhorn
The flugelhorn (), also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B, though some ...
*
Garnett Brown
Garnett Brown (January 31, 1936 – October 9, 2021) was a jazz trombonist who worked with The Crusaders, Herbie Hancock, Lionel Hampton, Earth Wind and Fire and others.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, he graduated from the University of Arkans ...
,
Warren Covington
Warren Covington (August 7, 1921 – August 24, 1999) was an American big band trombonist. He was active as a session musician, arranger, and bandleader throughout his career.
Biography
Covington, who was born in Philadelphia, played early on ...
– trombone
*
Wayne Andre
Wayne Andre (November 17, 1931 – August 26, 2003) was an American jazz trombonist, best known for his work as a session musician.
Andre's father was a saxophonist, and he took private music lessons from age 15. He played with Charlie Spivak in ...
– trombone,
baritone horn
The baritone horn, or sometimes just called baritone, is a low-pitched brass instrument in the saxhorn family.Robert Donington, "The Instruments of Music", (pp. 113ff ''The Family of Bugles'') 2nd ed., Methuen, London, 1962 It is a piston-val ...
*Paul Faulise –
bass trombone
The bass trombone (german: Bassposaune, it, trombone basso) is the bass instrument in the trombone family of brass instruments. Modern instruments are pitched in the same B♭ as the tenor trombone but with a larger bore, bell and mouthpiece to ...
*
James Buffington
James Lawrence Buffington (born May 15, 1922, Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania; died July 20, 1981, Englewood, New Jersey) was an American jazz, studio, and classical hornist.
Buffington was a busy studio and jazz player on the French horn. He was ...
, Brooks Tillotson – French horn
*
Grover Washington, Jr.
Grover Washington Jr. (December 12, 1943 – December 17, 1999) was an American jazz-funk and soul-jazz saxophonist. Along with Wes Montgomery and George Benson, he is considered by many to be one of the founders of the smooth jazz genre.
He wr ...
–
tenor saxophone
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...
*
Hubert Laws
Hubert Laws (born November 10, 1939) is an American flutist and saxophonist with a career spanning over 40 years in jazz, classical, and other music genres. Laws is one of the few classical artists who has also mastered jazz, pop, and rhythm- ...
– flute,
alto flute
The alto flute is an instrument in the Western concert flute family, the second-highest member below the standard C flute after the uncommon flûte d'amour. It is the third most common member of its family after the standard C flute and the ...
,
bass flute
The bass flute is a member of the flute family. It is in the key of C, pitched one octave below the concert flute. Despite its name, its playing range makes it the tenor member of the flute family. Because of the length of its tube (approximate ...
,
piccolo
The piccolo ( ; Italian for 'small') is a half-size flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" the modern piccolo has similar fingerings as the standard transverse flute, but the so ...
*Romeo Penque – clarinet, flute, alto flute, bass flute, piccolo, oboe,
English horn
The cor anglais (, or original ; plural: ''cors anglais''), or English horn in North America, is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family. It is approximately one and a half times the length of an oboe, making it essentially an alto ...
*George Marge – clarinet, flute, alto flute, bass flute, English horn
*David Horowitz – synthesizer
*
Ron Carter
Ronald Levin Carter (born May 4, 1937) is an American jazz double bassist. His appearances on 2,221 recording sessions make him the most-recorded jazz bassist in history. He has won three Grammy awards, and is also a cellist who has recorded nu ...
, Vishnu Bill Wood –
bass
Bass or Basses may refer to:
Fish
* Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species
Music
* Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range:
** Bass (instrument), including:
** Acoustic bass gui ...
*
Billy Cobham
William Emanuel Cobham Jr. (born May 16, 1944) is a Panamanian Americans, Panamanian–American jazz drummer who came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s with trumpeter Miles Davis and then with the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
He was indu ...
– drums
*Phil Kraus,
Airto Moreira
Airto Guimorvan Moreira (born August 5, 1941) is a Brazilian jazz drummer and percussionist. He is married to jazz singer Flora Purim, and their daughter Diana Moreira is also a singer. Coming to prominence in the late 1960s as a member of the ...
, Azzedin Weston – percussion
*Madame Meddah – vocals
*
Don Sebesky
Don Sebesky (born December 10, 1937) is an American arranger, jazz trombonist, and keyboardist.
Biography
Sebesky trained in trombone at the Manhattan School of Music; in his early career, he played with Kai Winding, Claude Thornhill, Tommy Do ...
– arranger, conductor
*
Rudy Van Gelder
Rudolph Van Gelder (November 2, 1924 – August 25, 2016) was an American recording engineer who specialized in jazz. Over more than half a century, he recorded several thousand sessions, with musicians including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Theloni ...
– engineer
*Bob Ciano – design
References
{{Authority control
CTI Records albums
Randy Weston albums
1972 albums
Albums produced by Creed Taylor
Albums arranged by Don Sebesky
Albums recorded at Van Gelder Studio