Performance Disks Come Close to Live Piano Sound

Want to hear some world-class jazz piano playing in your living room? Easy, you might say, just put an Oscar Peterson CD in the stereo.

But the question said “playing,” not playback. And although it’s not precisely the same as having a living, breathing artist sitting in your home, it is possible to enjoy a kind of virtual performance via piano performance disks.

Admittedly, it will take a certain amount of hardware to make it happen. But a fairly wide range of contemporary electronic instruments are capable of using the disks--from the Yamaha Disklavier and Clavinola to the Roland KR & HP Series and the Kurzweil Mark Series, and even some computers.

What, exactly, does one get from these disks? Something that is about as close to live performance as one can imagine, beyond actually having a musician present in the room. And don’t even think of mentioning piano rolls. Performance disks are as far from the early 20th century piano rolls as a modern stereo system is from Edison cylinder players.

The notes, of course, are accurately placed. But the computer technology that makes the disks possible provides an enormous range of other elements--touch, tone, articulation, rhythmic variation, etc. The resulting performances can be awesome--personal recitals filled with the feelings of emotional spontaneity present in a live performance.

At the moment, a number of companies are providing jazz piano performance disks, with new recordings continually in the works. The catalog of “Virtuoso Piano Performance” disks, recorded in Hollywood at the David Abell Fine Piano company, includes a diverse array of outings by Alan Broadbent, Mike Garson, Roger Kellaway, Eric Reed, Paul Smith, Terry Trotter and Gerald Wiggins.

The “Live Performance” catalog, devoted mostly to classical music, also lists performances by mainstream jazz pianist Dick Hyman performing Fats Waller and Duke Ellington. And Yamaha’s own set of jazz titles for the Disklavier includes recordings by Garson, Hyman, George Shearing, Chick Corea and others. All disks are marketed at $34.95, and are best found in piano stores.

Collections: Pianist Dave Brubeck was arguably the most visible jazz musician of the ‘50s. His quartet recordings with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond were necessary items in most collegiate dorm rooms and helped introduce a generation of postwar, pre-rock young people to the pleasures of improvised jazz.

Columbia Legacy is celebrating Brubeck’s 50 years as a jazz artist with the release of six CDs chronicling his 17-year tenure--from 1953 to 1970--at the company. Included are five complete Brubeck LPs--”Brubeck Time,” “Brubeck Plays Brubeck,” “Brubeck and Rushing” (with singer Jimmy Rushing), “Brandenburg Gate: Revisited” and “Bravo! Brubeck!”--including bonus unreleased tracks from most sessions. In addition, there is a completely new album, “Buried Treasures,” recorded live in Mexico in 1967 but never released.

For the most part, these are vintage Brubeck quartet recordings, recorded at a time when the Brubeck-Desmond interaction was one of the underappreciated marvels of modern jazz. Enjoyable as sheer entertaining jazz, the albums also help provide a useful perspective on the importance of the musical contributions made by the duo.

In the jazz avant-garde of the ‘60s, Impulse! Records, then under the creative direction of Bob Thiele, was a wellspring of cutting-edge performances. Saxophonist John Coltrane, of course, led the way, and his complete efforts for the company have now been released in an attractive, eight-CD boxed set, “Coltrane: The Classic Quartet--Complete Impulse! Studio Recordings.”

This is seminal jazz at its best. Coltrane’s Impulse! outings flowed naturally from his remarkable Atlantic Recordings in the early ‘60s, gradually evolving into some of the most passionate, most courageously adventurous jazz improvising ever heard. Although most of these recordings have been available individually, Impulse! has packaged them attractively, with thorough program notes and alternate takes. (But one wonders why record companies seem so drawn to the use of cumbersome, metal box containers--last year’s Bill Evans on Verve was a particularly annoying example--for multiple-CD packages.)

Impulse! also has released another eight CDs in its “The New Thing” series, dedicated to the adventurous jazz of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The titles are a virtual listing of some of the important performers energizing the New York City scene of the period: tenor saxophonists Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Sam Rivers and Dewey Redman, alto saxophonist Marion Brown, trombonist Roswell Rudd, and pianists Alice Coltrane and Cecil Taylor.

Much of the music is still difficult, still resonating with efforts--sometimes successful, often abortive--to stretch the limits of jazz improvisation. But it also includes utterly fascinating moments, especially in Taylor’s imaginative playing and the sheer deconstructive improvising of Ayler--artists whose visions insisted upon absolute creative honesty.

And, as an addition, Impulse! has also re-released one of the great landmark, under-acknowledged jazz composition efforts, George Russell’s “New York, New York.” Out of print for years, the performance includes contributions from Coltrane, Bill Evans, Max Roach, Benny Golson, Jon Hendricks and others.