# CD review: Ken Peplowski, Diego Figueiredo – Amizade 2019: Videos, Photo, CD cover

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/07/06/cd-review-ken-peplowski-diego-figueiredo-amizade-2019-videos-photo-cd-cover/
- Published: 2019-07-06T22:08:01+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**There can be few readers of _The Clarinet_ who are unfamiliar with the outstanding
artistry and career of Ken Peplowski. He is one of the finest jazz instrumentalists
on the scene today. Russell Davies of BBC Two hailed him as the greatest living 
jazz clarinetist. The Siletz Bay Music Festival in Oregon referred to him as “the
living Benny Goodman.”**

Ken is also one of the most recorded jazz players to date, with over 50 CDs as soloist
and nearly 400 as a featured sideman. He has performed with Charlie Byrd, Mel Tormé,
Rosemary Clooney, Hank Jones, Peggy Lee, Bill Charlop, Woody Allen, Benny Goodman
and many other legendary musicians. Centered in New York City, Ken travels about
half the year playing in clubs, colleges, jazz societies, parties, concert halls
and festivals. He is a longtime performer on and consultant to The Jazz Cruise, 
and in 2013 was elected into the Jazz Cruise Hall of Fame. In addition, Ken is the
artistic director of the Newport Beach (California) Jazz Party and the Sarasota (
Florida) Jazz Festival, where he was awarded the “Satchmo” award for his “unique
and enduring contribution to the living history of jazz.”^(2) Much of his work on
the road is done with his big band or his quartet. Wherever he plays, Ken is received
with great admiration by his audiences.

Immediately noticeable at a Ken Peplowski performance or on his recordings is his
amazing technical fluency. He has complete command of the instrument at every tempo
and a rock-solid sense of rhythmic drive in ballads, standard songs, and up-tempo
traditional jazz tunes. His sound is full, rich and warm in all registers. When 
students come to him with an interest in learning how to become jazz players, he
starts with the importance of breath and air support and works with them on the 
rudiments of a pure classic sound and even finger technique.

Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1960s he heard Robert Marcellus in the Cleveland
Orchestra and on recordings, and studied for three months with Ted Johnson, a member
of the clarinet  section in the orchestra. Ken’s main teacher at this time was Alan
Blazer. He also “practiced like crazy.”^(3) His career in performance started with
professional jobs at age 9 in the local polka band that he formed with his brother.
This is where he honed his technique and trained his ear. A defining moment in his
early musical life was when he bought his first jazz record with money he made playing
in the polka band: Stan Getz, _More West Coast Jazz_ (Verve Records, 1956). In 1978,
Ken joined the Tommy Dorsey Band led by Buddy Morrow and went to work on the road.
Three years later he moved to New York to begin a career of studio dates, concerts,
recording sessions, and international touring. Recognition quickly followed.

What sets Ken apart from many other jazz players is his abundance of ideas and an
abiding interest in exploring all types of music in performance. Jazz players know
that brilliant virtuosity is only part of a rewarding performance, and that collective
improvisation is at the heart of jazz music and has been since the earliest years.
Ken is a catalyst for much of the dazzling interplay that occurs in his great ensemble
jazz. He has a very quick mind and a telepathic rapport with the other musicians
on the stand. The result is a rich collaboration that is the hallmark of every performance
he gives. In any musical performance, the interaction of the performers is a critical
component of a successful musical experience. With a defining emphasis on improvisation,
jazz is perhaps explicitly reliant on the spontaneous interaction of the musicians,
and, when performed by Ken Peplowski and the musicians in his groups, the results
can be transformative. His duo albums with Howard Alden (Concord, CCD-4556, 1993;
CCD 4654, 1995 and _Pow-Wow_ on Arbors Records, ARCD 19340, 2007) and Dick Hyman(
_Live at the Kitano_, Victoria Company, 2013) attest to the musical intelligence
of two superb musicians playing off each other’s musical ideas.

In his performances, Ken has embraced a huge breadth of styles and periods of jazz.
For him the entire century of jazz music has become an endless well of possible 
tunes to play and record. His albums contain traditional jazz tunes, selections 
from the Great American Songbook, bebop, big band styles, third-stream and avant-
garde jazz and even ethnic folk and dance music. There is always a fresh variety
of textures and styles. The quintet and quartet albums often include a few duet 
pieces and even some tunes performed on clarinet unaccompanied. These require a 
harmonic structure that can be realized and communicated by a single instrument.
Occasionally the decision to record a work for clarinet alone happens in the recording
studio. Ken likes the spontaneity of the moment and the challenge of creating something
special at the moment the recording is made.

Ken has an aversion to tribute albums where “musicians slavishly recreate old records.”
In reference to his Benny Goodman tribute discs, _International All Stars Play Benny
Goodman_ (Nagel-Heyer, CD 025 and 045), he said,

We decided to just play, in our own voices, songs that were either recorded by Benny,
or should have been. [There are] no transcribed solos, no imitation of specific 
musicians… just a group of like-minded friends reminiscing in tempo about one of
our greatest influences in jazz.^(4)

It is Ken Peplowski playing his own personal interpretation of the jazz standards
in new and fresh ways.

Of special interest to Ken are the obscure or rarely-heard tunes. Peplowski albums
are filled with discoveries of forgotten tunes that he and his group spontaneously
reinvent. On his fine CD _The Other Portrait_ (Concord Concerto, CCD 42043) are 
pieces by Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Ornette Coleman reworked and uniquely
presented. Here also is Darius Milhaud’s _Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra_ written
in 1941 for Benny Goodman, but never performed by him. The concerto was recorded
for this disc with the Bavarian National Symphony in Sofia, Bulgaria. There is also
a piece written by Duke Ellington called “Single Petal of a Rose.” It is one movement
from _The Queen’s Suite_, written in 1959 for Queen Elizabeth II, who received the
only pressing of the original recording. Ken played his version of it on solo clarinet
without accompaniment. The recording also contains _Cadenza_ by Plamin Djurov written
in 1995 for saxophone and violin. This marks the first recording of the piece.

_Enrapture_ (Capri Records 74141-2) is a recent Ken Peplowski recording with his
quartet (reviewed by Randy Salman in _The Clarinet_, March 2017). It includes songs
by John Lennon, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and two tracks from Bernard Herrmann’s
classic score to Alfred Hitchcock’s film _Vertigo_. Diversity is the expectation
on a Ken Peplowski recording. It is most important that he and his musicians never
fail to bring new life to his choices and to deliver them in revitalized and enriched
form. With an interest in all kinds of music, it is not surprising that his output
is so varied and rich.

Ken has been active in the clarinet community at the ClarinetFest® conferences from
2001 to his most recent, riveting performance in Orlando in 2017. He is also available
to us in _The Clarinet_, most notably in Thomas W. Jacobsen’s fine interview/article
in Vol. 30, No. 2 from March 2003 (pp. 42-52) and in several audio reviews of his
work. Let me add one other resource that I encourage you to enjoy. It is Ken Peplowski’s
performance of the 1922 jazz classic _China Boy_ on YouTube recorded live at the
Bern Switzerland Jazz Festival in 1993 with a running transcription of the solo 
clarinet part realized by Ramsey Castaneda below the video.

Almost everything you hear on this recording is a first take, including Diego’s 
original, Por Paco(as in Paco DeLucia), where you’re hearing literally what I’m 
hearing and reacting to in the moment. We hope you like our little journey and we
look forward to embarking on the next.

1.Caravan
 2.Quizas, Quizas, Quizas Besame Mucho 3.A Little Journey 4.On Note Samba
5.Black Orpheus 6.Apelo 7.Retrato em Branco E Preto 8.Pro Paco 9.Stompin’ At The
Savoy 10.Amizade 11.So Danco Samba

**Ken Peplowski clarinet, tenor sax**
 **Diego Figueiredo guitar**

![Image result for review Ken Peplowski, Diego Figueiredo - Amizade](https://i0.
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![Image result for review Ken Peplowski, Diego Figueiredo - Amizade](https://i0.
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