Art Pepper
Today

THE REVIEW

Among the greatest white saxophonists of all time we can certainly list the controversial Art Pepper. A figure who spent several years behind bars and emerged radically changed. But not only physically. His new image is reflected in the tattoos, in his face marked by horrific sufferings, and even in his music, an incredible transformation can be read.

Reborn. Seventeen years after the album "Intensity," "Living Legend" is released. It's 1975, and the record label (Contemporary) surprisingly bets once again on this immense talent, recognizing its neo-musical nature that has become suffering, energetic, full of life and sentiment, wrapped in a dramatic and intense filament. In particular, we find the inhuman sadness, the sense of loss of oneself and of things that will never return, contained in the 1978 album titled "Today." Probably the most complete and intense of this artist.

In a quartet of sax, piano, double bass, with Roy Haynes on drums, a remarkable session is produced, filled with content, synthetic, essential, summarizing. In a word: mature.
7 tracks, 6 in the original edition, infused with anxiety, executive fury, inner strength seeking to express itself, for a musician who tries to tell his story. Impeccable group, fascinating percussion in "These Foolish Things". Latin tendencies in "Mambo Koyama" and fresh melodic panisms in "Miss Who?"

After this work, Pepper recorded four more, in duo (piano), and in 1983 he died, at only 56 years old. Throughout his life, he pursued beauty, perhaps himself, to be able to offer it to others, with his music, his pain, his solitude.