GIGI GRYCE: Nica's Tempo (1955)

GIGI GRYCE

Gigi Gryce é mais um daqueles músicos extraordinários que permanece como um segredo muito bem guardado, para uso exclusivo dos seus admiradores - entre os quais se inclui este escriba. Embora Gigi fosse um saxofonista (alto) formidável, era melhor ainda como compositor; seus  temas são belíssimos, sofisticados, complexos e elegantes. Gigi administrava mal sua vida particular: era extremamente irresponsável, faltava a compromissos constantemente, sumia por uns tempos, sem dar notícia - o que lhe garantiu várias demissões, por quebra de contrato. Como consequencia dessa irresponsabilidade, sua vida foi caótica: meteu os pés pelas mãos, ao resolver ser editor de músicas e, além de ter sofrido (e causado) prejuízos enormes, foi processado pelos autores. Sua carreira chegou ao fim, abrupta e precocemente, depois que seu nome entrou no "index" das "personas non gratas" entre os músicos de jazz. Por conta de tudo isso, parou de tocar e foi ser professor de música. Morreu aos 58 anos, aparentemente por causa de complicações ligadas à epilepsia.

(*) A composição "Nica´s Tempo", que dá nome ao álbum, foi uma homenagem de GG à Baronesa Pannonica de Koenisgwater - a legendária  NICA, uma triliardária, descendente dos Rothschild, que era uma espécie de "mecenas" dos músicos de jazz (Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Gigi Gryce, Horace Silver, Bud Powell, etc - eram seus protegidos). Nica inspirou vários temas: "Nica's Tempo" (Gigi Gryce),  "Nica" (Sonny Clark), "Nica's Dream" (Horace Silver), "Tonica" (Kenny Dorham), "Blues for Nica" (Kenny Drew), "Nica Steps Out", (Freddie Redd), "Inca" (Barry Harris), "Thelonica" (Tommy Flanagan) e "Pannonica" (Thelonious Monk). A família, horrorizada, não se conformava em assistir àquele bando de músicos (todos negros - numa época em que isso era razão mais que suficiente para manter distância deles) aboletados no apartamento de NICA, ou dirigindo (normalmente embriagados) seu Bentley prateado, em New York - onde ela passou a viver a maior parte do tempo. E nas suas temporadas na Europa, as mesmas cenas se repetiam, com os músicos que se auto exilaram na França e outros países. Suspeita-se que ela e Monk fossem amantes: existem controvérsias mas, pelo menos um romance "platônico" rolou entre eles, sob o olhar complacente da mulher de Monk. Sua ligação com TM - como era inevitável - lhe rendeu grandes aborrecimentos, culminando com uma prisão e processo por porte de drogas. A paixão de Nica pelo jazz (e, mais específicamente, por Monk), começou quando o conheceu, por intermédio de Mary Lou Williams, em Paris. Ao ouvir "´Round Midnight", esta música passou a ser a trilha sonora de sua eletrizante vida.

(**) Charlie Parker morreu numa suite de hotel Stanhope, de propriedade de Nica, em New York, o que provocou sua mundança para outro hotel: o Bolivar. Mas não foi a única tragédia do gênero: Thelonious Monk, morreu na casa de Nica em Weehawken, New Jersey.

(***)A biografia de Nica está ali embaixo. 

(****) Nestes links, existem fotos e alguns artigos muito interessantes, acerca do relacionamento entre Monk e Nica:

http://howardm.net/tsmonk/time7.php
http://www.forward.com/articles/119145/

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GIGI GRYCE
Gigi Gryce ( 1925-1983) is one of those jazz musicians that didn't got the recognition they deserve. As an alto saxophone player he was a follower of Bird´s steps. Gigi stopped playing professionally early 1960s: he became involved in independent publishing of compositions from musicians, not usual in those days, which brought him into financial problems. He didn't use his name Gigi Gryce anymore, but used his Moslem name Basheer Quism and decided to leave the music business. He became a music teacher. His last recordings dates from January 1961 for Mercury with his orchestra ( Reminisin') Gigi Gryce was born in Pensacola Fl. November 1927 and passed away in that same place March 1983. In the  mid-1950s he converted to Islam and got the name Basheer Quism, like more jazz musicians from that period. He didn't use that name until the early 1960s. He was one of those alto saxophone players who was influenced by Charlie Parker, like Frank Morgan and Herb Geller, but he developed into his own style with a much darker tone and broader vibrato, the phrasing less supple but with an emphatic vocal quality that carries over into his flute-playing. He studied at the Boston Conservatory but also in Paris thanks to a Fulbright scholarship. He started his career as a musician in New York City in the early 1950s playing with Max Roach, Howard McGhee, Tadd Dameron and Clifford Brown. Gigi Gryce will be remembered as a composer, because of his compositions and arrangements and the way he wanted to revive the music of the bebop period. Gigi is not one of those great experimenters, like, with a 1960 view, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy or Cecil Taylor ( list by Joe Goldberg). He has always been concerned with the re-exploration of previously introduced forms. Gigi stopped playing professionally early 1960s. He became involved in independent publishing of compositions from musicians, not usual in those days, which brought him into financial problems. He didn't use his name Gigi Gryce anymore, but used his Moslem name Basheer Quism and decided to leave the music business. He bacame a (music) teacher. His last recordings dates from January 1961.
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ALBUM REVIEW

Altoist Gigi Gryce is heard in two different settings on this LP-length CD reissue (which should have also contained his four slightly earlier quartet cuts for Savoy). Gryce heads a nonet using the same instrumentation as Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool group. Four of the songs are instrumentals ("Kerry Dance" and three of the leader's originals) while "Social Call" and "You'll Always Be the One I Love" feature early vocals by Ernestine Anderson. In addition, Gryce is showcased in a 1955 quartet with pianist Thelonious Monk, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Art Blakey. Although Monk contributed three originals (with the colorful names of "Shuffle Boil," "Brake's Sake" and "Gallop's Gallop") ironically, it is the one Gryce contribution ("Nica's Tempo") that became a standard. A fine reissue, Nica's Tempo is one of Denon's better Savoy sets Ernestine Anderson - Her appearance on Gigi Gryce's 1955 album Nica's Tempo (Savoy) led to a partnership with trumpeter Rolf Ericson for a three-month Scandinavian tour.
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NICA ( Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter)
Her name, usually shortened to Nica, found its way into many a tune performed in her honour, from Horace Silver’s Nica’s Dream to Thelonious Monk’s Pannonica. But Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter has always been one of the more mysterious figures in jazz history. Some music buffs know her only as the owner of the hotel suite in which the ailing Charlie Parker died. (The newspapers of the day, always alert to the possibility of interracial mischief, vied with each other to invent the most lurid headlines about the episode.) And others remember her simply as the glamorous Rothschild heiress who had a habit of arriving at gigs in a silver Bentley. She is, in short, the stuff of legend — but the baroness was much more than some colourful hostess or starstruck groupie. In an era when black musicians struggled to gain any respect from the musical stablishment, Nica Rothschild — who died in 1988 at the age of 74 — provided crucial moral and financial support. A larger-than-life character, she was a born rebel whose passion for music led her to challenge the social mores of the day. Nica had always gravitated towards the unconventional. In her youth she had been an aviator before marrying a French aristocrat who was a mining engineer and pilot. During the second world war she served with distinction with the Free French in Africa. Once peace came, and the baron took up a career as a diplomat, Nica had difficulty adapting to the role of ambassador’s wife. The couple separated in the early 1950s, by which time she had become an aficionado of the new, angular form of jazz known as bebop. Settling in New York, she became a regular fixture at the clubs. In New York, she became a friend and patron of many prominent jazz musicians, hosting jam sessions in her hotel suite. She is sometimes referred to as the "bebop baroness" or "jazz baroness" because of her patronage of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker among others. Following Parker's death in her Stanhope rooms in 1955, Koenigswarter was asked to leave by the hotel management; she re-located to the Bolivar Hotel at 230 Central Park West, a building commemorated in Thelonious Monk's 1956 tune "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are". She was introduced to Thelonious Monk by jazz  pianist and composer, Mary Lou Williams, in Paris while attending the "Salon du Jazz 1954", and championed his work in the USA, writing the liner notes for his 1962 Columbia album Criss-Cross, and even took criminal responsibility when she and Monk were charged with marijuana possession by the police. After Monk ended his public performances he retired to Nica's house in Weehawken, New Jersey and died there in 1982. There are numerous jazz compositions in her honour. Gigi Gryce's "Nica's Tempo", Sonny Clark's "Nica", Horace Silver's "Nica's Dream", Kenny Dorham's "Tonica", Kenny Drew's "Blues for Nica", Freddie Redd's "Nica Steps Out", Barry Harris's "Inca", Tommy Flanagan's "Thelonica" and Thelonious Monk's "Pannonica" were all named after her. When musicians — most of them black — were in financial trouble or needed somewhere to stay, Nica was invariably the person they turned to. She was confidante, shop steward, legal advisor and agent all rolled into one. The issue of race always hovered in the background, and Nica’s friendships with black artists inevitably prompted hostile gossip. Even to be seen walking in the street with a black man was an act of defiance. At the centre of the programme is Nica’s enigmatic relationship with Thelonious Monk, pianist, eccentric and composer of one of the great jazz standards, ’Round Midnight. Nica, who had become obsessed with the tune, first met Monk in 1954 and thenceforth became his unstinting ally and muse. Monk’s homely wife, Nellie, seems to have approved of their relationship, in part because Monk’s erratic mental condition (which would nowadays probably be defined as bipolar) imposed extraordinary demands on all who came into contact with him. Not surprisingly, though, rumours about a love affair flourished. Did it become a physical relationship? Rothschild thinks not. “If you look at the photographs, she looks at him adoringly,” says Hannah. “There’s no doubt in my mind that she loved him. I asked every single person I came across, ‘Did they, did they . . . ?’, and almost everyone said no. It would have suited me better if they had had an affair. It’s a more obvious story. But, you know, sex doesn’t always have to come into it.”

(*) See the links below, for some photos and comments, about Monk and Nica relationship:

http://howardm.net/tsmonk/time7.php
http://www.forward.com/articles/119145/

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MINHA OPINIÃO
As composições de GG são fantásticas: uma das minhas preferidas, pela complexidade é 'Smoke Signal'. Em alguns arranjos, Gigi "copydescou" a formação e o estilo do seminal grupo de Miles Davis, no álbum "The birth of the Cool".  Embora não tivesse alcançado a extrema sofisticação dos arranjos de Gerry Mulligan naquele álbum, o resultado é ótimo. Destaque para a cantora ERNESTINE ANDERSON, cantando duas baladas elegantérrimas. O time de craques dispensa apresentação: um "dream team"! Por isso tudo, só pode ser OURO EM PÓ!
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GIGI GRYCE: Nica's Tempo 1955

PERSONNEL:
Gigi Gryce - as (#1-10)
Art Farmer - tp (#1-6)
Eddie Bert - tb (#3-5)
Jimmy Cleveland - tb (#1-6)
Danny Bank - b s (#1-6)
Cecil Payne - b s (#1-6)
Gunther Schuller - frh (#1-6)
Julius Watkins - frh (#1-6)
Horace Silver - p (#1-6)
Oscar Pettiford - b (#1-6)
Art Blakey - dr (#3, 5, 7-10)
Kenny Clarke - dr (#1-6)
Ernestine Anderson - voc (#3-5)
Thelonious Monk - p (#7-10)
Percy Heath - b (#7-10)

TRACKS/FAIXAS:
1 Speculation (Gryce) 4:03
2 In a Meditating Mood (Gryce, Hendricks) 4:22
3 Social Call (Gryce) 2:44
4 Smoke Signal (Gryce) 3:42
5 You'll Always Be the One I Love (Gryce) 3:26
6 Kerry Dance (Molloy) 3:00
7 Shuffle Boil (Monk) 4:59
8 Brake's Sake (Monk) 4:47
9 Gallop's Gallop (Monk) 5:25
10 Nica's Tempo (Gryce) 6:09