Artist: Herbie Hancock
Album: Maiden Voyage
Modal Tracks: Maiden Voyage, Dolphin Dance
Date: 1965
Description: The title track “Maiden Voyage” is a modal jazz masterpiece. Airy and impressionistic, it uses suspended chords to create a feeling of spaciousness. Hancock’s piano solo on this record is a master class in taste and restraint, ebbing and flowing over shimmering cymbal work from Tony Williams.
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Artist: Wayne Shorter
Album: Speak No Evil
Modal Tracks: Witch Hunt, Infant Eyes
Date: 1964
Description: Wayne Shorter remains one of the most influential composers in jazz, his reputation built on a series of brilliant 1960s compositions. On the modal track “Witch Hunt”, he combines the minimalism and spaciousness of Kind of Blue with elements of tension and energy. The result is an intriguing mix of West coast cool and hard bop, ambiguous in feel and emotion.
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Artist: Freddie Hubbard
Album: BackLash
Modal Tracks: Little Sunflower
Date: 1966
Description: “Little Sunflower” is an extremely mellow and beautiful modal ballad. Freddie Hubbard is at his lyrical best in this song and his playing floats majestically over a latin tinged arrangement. Quite fittingly this song has gone on to become a modal jazz standard.
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Artist: Freddie Hubbard
Album: Straight Life
Modal Tracks: Straight Life
Date: 1970
Description: “StraightLife” is a modal monster! 17 minutes of funky jazz-rock with Herbie Hancock adding some Latin style piano to the proceedings. Hubbard and Joe Henderson (saxophone) put down some amazing solos with Ron Carter (bass) and Jack DeJohnette (drums) making up a formidable rhythm section.
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Artist: McCoy Tyner
Album: Atlantis
Modal Tracks: Atlantis
Date: 1974
Description: Recorded live in San Francisco, “Atlantis” is an 18-minute roller coaster ride. Starting quietly with mysterious bell sounds and percussion, McCoy adds some impressionistic lines to the mix. Then at 2:00, thunderous percussion (including Tyner’s piano) and a surging riff kick in. This powerful cacophony of sound does not relent for another 15 minutes! Awesome.
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Artist: Bill Evans
Album: Time Remembered
Modal Tracks: Time Remembered
Date: 1963
Description: "Time remembered" is a beautiful, original ballad written by Bill Evans. Along with the album Moonbeams it was recorded shortly after the death of the bassist Scott la Faro, and unsurprisingly finds Evans in a reflective and introspective frame of mind. This modal song has a tentative and vulnerable feel to it, perhaps hinting at Evans own state of mind at that point.
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Artist: McCoy Tyner
Album: The Real McCoy
Modal Tracks: Passion Dance, Four by Five
Date: 1967
Description: The Real McCoy was Tyner’s first solo outing for the record label Blue Note, and is one of his best albums. Tyner takes the modal ideas he explored with John Coltrane and adds his own distinctive sound and writing style, giving the songs a tighter and more focused feel. “Passion Dance” and “Four by Five” both kick-off with a repetitive, rhythmic melody before launching intro a brilliant and intense long modal vamp.
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