Shirley Horn
I Remember Miles

THE GIRL AND THE GIANT
The image dominating the cover is a drawing by Miles. A kiss.
Six years had passed since the disappearance of Miles Davis when Shirley Horn recorded this album, which was published the following year ('98).
But many more had passed, almost three decades, since she opened for Miles at the Village Vanguard, performing, among others, three of the tracks that she would later record in her tribute to that figure so familiar to her.
He was the one who “discovered her,” the chronicles tell.
In between, between the debut alongside the giant and the tribute she dedicated to him, there was a life.
Made also of oblivion, of distance from the stage, of dedication to the family, of comebacks and successes that decreed the rise towards the definitive affirmation of an extremely precocious talent (she started playing the piano at the age of 4) refined on the “delicate side of swing”*.
The one she remembered “almost like an uncle,” her mentor in the early ’60s, remains a star that illuminates the sky of every music lover with a light that can never be dimmed. A light that certainly had not dimmed in Horn's heart, as demonstrated by the love and respect emanated from every single minute of this splendid work, which earned her a Grammy for the best vocal jazz album.

REMEMBERING SHIRLEY
And it has been almost a year since Shirley's death, at the age of 71, in October 2005.
While I listen to the notes of her piano, their progression and her touch, I think that the quality of this music makes the Grammy recognition paradoxically limited.
It's not just an excellent work of vocal jazz, but a wonderful jazz album, impeccably played by a group of musicians, including a couple (Ron Carter and Al Foster) who were part of Miles' bands.

It must not have been easy for “little” Shirley to choose the tracks from the vast repertoire of “uncle.”
Nor is it a small feat for the young trumpeter Roy Hargrove, entrusted by her to evoke and interpret the sound of a legend. He will handle it admirably, both in the version more “faithful” to the model and in the more personal one.
Horn decides to draw mainly from the '60s with some forays into the “electric” heart of the following years. And it doesn't include any Davis compositions (except for the closing track, “Blue In Green”, signed by Miles and Evans) but tracks that he had interpreted in his unmistakable style.
Shirley's hands and voice provide an extremely personal rendition of the precious material: an intimate declination that privileges a measured approach as a tool for probing the essence of the tracks. So much so that they sometimes appear even more rarefied than in Davis' versions, moved by a sure delicacy, in trajectories that become pure emotion in some vocal passages.

9 EXERCISES IN STYLE
The album opens with a timeless gem.
Listen to how Horn handles a challenge like that represented by “My Funny Valentine”: the delicate precision of her voice, the quality of the accents, the stylization of the melodic profile, the small swarm of notes on which that voice hints at a tension that then softens, with apparent naturalness and absolute perfection, into a simply exemplary finale.
You are already immersed in a mood that will not abandon you, captured by crystalline class.
And in “I Fall In Love Too Easily” listen to the attack of that voice: it comes almost immediately and in a few seconds reveals, over the sparse notes from the piano and Hargrove's discreet breath, all the charm of the melancholic yet disenchanted languor that pervades the song.
In the third track, “Summertime,” Toots Thielemans' harmonica also makes its appearance, pouring its sound into a revisitation tinged with refined blues of the immortal standard penned by Gershwin. Here Shirley's voice chooses an essential dance but marked by precious details, in the passage between the open exuberance and the modulated whisper in the turn of a phrase.
I will not push further the attempt at description: the other six tracks are on the same, excellent levels, delivering an album that renews with every listen the magic of the careful strength that guides it.

As the notes of a “Blue In Green” transfigured in the piano interpretation, avoiding the exposition of the theme while evoking its essence, close the intense homage of a true jazz lady to a great musician, listening to them I conclude these lines with an invitation: let yourselves be enchanted by this voice, allow it to show you its magic.
The magic of another star that will continue to shine in the boundless sky of jazz.

* See article in More Info