Monday, December 30, 2013

THE FINAL BALANCE OF 2013





By Claudio Botelho

Among the many CD’s I’ve listened this year, one was especially superlative. By enhancing said CD to 24 bit/196 kHz, it sounded wonderful.
(I’ve been listening to CD’s for 99,999% of my time and, for me, turntables, cartridges, alignment protractors, extreme leveling of turntable, careful adjustment of cartridges and the like are things of the past, no matter how often the vinylists insist on saying there’s no intelligent life out of a preamplifier phone stage. If one decides (as I like to do) to investigate this matter in the light of its technicality, he will fail to find objective reasons to justify said vinyl sound superiority. For me, the innumerate mechanical variables one deal with when assembling a complete LP reproducing system is so gargantuan that it is almost impossible to get a faithful reproduction of real life.
But, on this endeavor, after all sorts of struggles, he’ll most certainly arrive at a point that will please well (or extremely well, for that matter) his taste: now the sound is tailored for him and nothing will beat it! Euphony rules...
I keep on thinking turntables is akin to car carburetors and see no reason to find it better than digital players and, so, be in a different league, for instance, than digital photography and television!)
Now, let’s go back to my first sentence. Last Sunday afternoon, while listening to a bunch of CD’s (with assurance of a generous intake of electric energy to my rig), I decided to listen to Ahmad Jamal’s latest “Saturday Morning: La Buissanne Studio Sessions”. Man, what an excellent recording! What a natural sound! What a Steinway! Wow! Can a recording get any better than this? If your perspective is three dimensionality, tonal purity and full frequency response, you’d have to work very hard to find a better recording. I, being an ordinary music lover and not golden eared at all, couldn’t find any of the shortcomings usually associated with CD playing; my experience bordered the epiphany! This was the CD above mentioned.
To sum it up, the musical presentation was nothing short of remarkable. Jamal’s pianism, infused with great confidence as always, was the most natural extension of a grand Steinway to be found anywhere this side of the classical world. No jazz pianist I know has his easy-casual style of playing. Jamal is an energy-saver player; one who, even during fortissimos, plays effortlessly, in the most natural way. He’s extremely in tune and the sound he extracts from the piano (always first-rate grand concert Steinways) is on par with the best anyone can extract from this fantastic instrument.
Some jazz aficionados, including some of my “jazz-friends”, have taken him for granted for long, saying he’s been repeating himself. Of course, these people expect something new each time an artist releases a new recording. I’m more humble in my expectations; I just wanna have some more stuff of the same piece of cloth. For me, each musician has his comfort zone and any time he tries to leave it behind he does a lesser job. So, 99% of the time, a bit more of the same thing is the best deal, especially if we’re leading with the unexpectedness nature of jazz. Here, the simple matter of handling this form of art puts monotony out of the equation. Sometimes, too much of a good thing can sink the ship, you know…
A compulsive jazz listener, I have my own comfort zone as anyone else and it stays firmly inside piano-jazz trios, although I frequently listen to different groups of musicians, large ensembles and even a plethora of some many false-jazz singers we have these days, some of them, by the way, earning valuable prizes as jazz accomplishers.
The Jamal we have today is the same we had in, say, 1958 and, irrespective of his somewhat advanced age, keeps on refining his craft: his sometimes sparse playing (his hallmark), incisive attacks, riffs and unexpected changes remain, but time has given them much more assertiveness and polish. His beliefs, likes and dislikes are unchanged and he’s still the same original stylist of yore.
He’s not a musician for frantic listeners; he must be savored slowly, like a good old wine. Always effortlessly playing, sometimes the entireness of his playing passes by unnoticed by those a little less attentive, but the real game is that, although exhilarating many times, he’s a musician of many subtleties which are mixed with his frequent riffs.
Those in search of novelty playing must look elsewhere, as his playing is well established; he’s found his way long ago and most certainly will keep on tracking it without detours, always masterfully conceiving sounds of great expressiveness and ease. I’ve listened his last outing for days in a row now and find it is much difficult this happen with works of other players. This, in my view, can only attest the timelessness of his music.
One thing that escapes to the awareness of many is that when we search for the work of an artist we want “more of the same thing”, just like when we look for a bottle of Coke: we know, beforehand, what we’ll be getting; anything different will make our effort a failure! So, please, don’t ask Jamal to be any different and be pleased to find he’s the same old chap that has been making music of the highest level all these years!
So, this is my CD of this year. The remaining nine are:

2- ROSARIO GIULIANI & FRANCO D’ANDREA – “DUETS FOR TRANE”. As I’ve already written about, this is a tour-de-force recording done by two outstanding musicians. Strongly stated throughout, this is a recording as organic as one can get.

3- VINCE MENDOZA – “BLAUKLANG”. This is a work of an arranger which always transcends the pop music world and borders the highest echelon of this art. Subtly and multilayered, his arrangements are a statement of elegance.

4- BOBO STENSON – “INDICUM”. The capsule rendering of a Bill Evans song (Your Story) which opens the album sets the mood of the whole work: simplicity, sensitivity, elegant understatement and symbiosis. This is the recipe of a work that can be listened times and times again; relentlessly…

5- CLAUDIO FILIPPINI TRIO – “FACING NORTH”. The young pianist Filippini has been of my acquaintance since the end of 2011. As of now, this is the fifth or sixth of his albums that I have the pleasure to listen. Some fresh air in his playing! In this endeavor, he is mated by Nordic players of Palle Danielson renown and finish drummer Olavi Louhivouri, a departure from his all-Italian musicians of his former works. Due to the great admiration he has to these northern musicians, he conceded them a little more space to stretch and, as such, his pianism shrank a bit. This is the reason I find some of his earlier works more to my liking, but not to the point of leaving this CD out of my list of this year.

6- NICO CATACCHIO T(TH)REE – “THE SECOND APPLE”. Certainly, not one more Ray Brown trio! Here, you have meticulous and complex arrangements of original songs in which everybody has a distinct role and no one overshadows any other. Comprised of piano, bass and drums, the group follows a program of somewhat darkish songs of great inspiration, with little space for spontaneous playing, which makes the renderings not all that jazzy, but, otherwise, richly enchanting. Catacchio is a bass player and has chosen to make an album of great expressiveness.

7- ALESSIO MENCONI – “SKETCHES OF MILES”. As you may have gathered, the repertory is Miles Davis’. The combination of guitar, organ and drums is a winner one and, here, you have a very tight trio where the organ admirably fills the spaces left by the guitar and the drums work a little behind, rounding off everything. All you have to do is relax and listen to the songs.

8- TIM LAPTHORN – “SEVENTH SENSE”. Richly focused, recorded out of first takes, this work of the young Lapthorn shows he’s one of the best pianists of his generation. As much as it was easy for them to record it, it is to savor it. You go from the first song to the last one without noting the passing of time. Who can ask for more?

9- JOE DE FRANCESCO – “WONDERFUL! WONDERFUL!” Captured by the great engineer Rudy Van Gelder, the sound of this CD is pristine, as pristine is the performance of its musicians. The mood is always optimistic, the interplay faultless and the pleasure of listening to the octogenarian Jimmy Cobb playing like hell is enough to make this work a great diversion.

10- FRED HERSCH & JULIAN LAGE – “FREE FLYING”. Unfortunately marred by a lousy recording, this is one of the most meaningful works of Hersch. The young guitarist Lange (already an experienced musician) is up to the task of playing with such a talented pianist as Hersch. Except songs of Sam rivers (Beatrice) and Thelonius Monk (Monk’s Dream), the program is comprised of Hersch originals, which makes things tougher for Lage, but the young player was not challenged by this and plays in the same level of that master. The presentation (a live recording) is eclectic and ranges from Bach’s to rag time modal playing, passing to almost any other kind of music extant. A natural show-off of interplay this is!

Some other albums deserve mention; they are:
11- DOMINIC J. MARSHALL TRIO – “ICAROS”;
12- PHRONESIS – “WALKING DARK”;
13- ORRIN EVANS – “…IT WAS BEAUTY”; and
14- STEVE KUHN – “THE VANGUARD DATE”.

One last thing I couldn’t let unnoticed: this was a poor year for jazz recorded music. It was certainly more difficult for me to make this list and the result is wanting indeed. Let’s wait that the coming year will be better, that the Italians give us more of their fabulous musicianship and that, at the end of it, we don’t have to search so hard to make a list of albums to be reckoned.
I wish for all of you a better year than this one.

Corrigendum.
This article was published in 31.12.2013. I have committed a gross mistake in my list of the best of the year: I’ve forgotten mentioning Alan Broadbent’s “Heart to Heart” solo outing. I could never have missed it for the simple reason it is one of the very best albums of the last year. So consider it in my premium list and displace Joe DeFrancesco’s “Wonderful! Wonderful” to the “deserve to mention” group. Broadbent’s album was covered to some extent in my former article, making it unnecessary to do it again here.

WORLDJAZZ TOP 10 - 2013

Best Jazz 2013 by WORLDJAZZ

Jazz Record of 2013
- Alan Broadbent - Heart To Heart 

Top 10 Jazz Records of 2013
- Joey DeFrancesco - Wonderful ! Wonderful ! 
- Nico Catacchio T(th)ree - The Second Apple
- Di Stéffano - Outros Mares
- Charles Lloyd & Jason Moran - Hagar's Song

- Claudio Fillipini Trio - Facing North
- Marcos Valle & Stacey Kent with Jim Tomilson - Ao Vivo
- Rosário Giuliani & Franco D'Andrea - Duets For Trane
- Tim Lapthorn - Seventh Sense
- Ahmad Jamal - Saturday Morning


Artiste du Jazz 2013
Hamilton de Holanda & Ahmad Jamal

FRIENDS TOP 10 JAZZ CD's - 2013

By Claudio Botelho

01- AHMAD JAMAL - SATURDAY MORNING
02- ROSARIO GIULIANI & FRANCO D'ANDREA - DUETS FOR TRANE
03- VINCE MENDOZA - BLAUKLANG
04- BOBO STENSON - INDICUM
05- CLAUDIO FILIPPINI TRIO - FACING NORTH
06- NICO CATACCHIO T(TH)REE - THE SECOND APPLE
07- ALESSIO MENCONI - SKETCHES OF MILES
08- TIM LAPTHORN - SEVENTH SENSE
09- ALAN BROADBENT - HEART TO HEART
10- FRED HERSCH & JULIAN LAGE - FREE FLYING
Menções honrosas:
01- DOMINIC J. MARSHALL TRIO - ICAROS
02- PHRONESIS - WALKING DARK
03- ORRIN EVANS - ... IT WAS BEAUTY
04- STEVE KHUN - THE VANGUARD DATE
05- JOE DEFRANCESCO - WONDERFUL! WONDERFUL!


By Dr. Marcílio Adjafre

Ano sem lançamentos extraordinários, mas que propiciou a avaliação de algumas coisas antigas graças ao Itunes, ferramenta que utilizei bastante. De forma que alguns CD da relação só estão disponíveis, ou eu só os tenho, na forma digital. Os três primeiros da lista foram realmente os que mais me impressionaram e deram margem a repetidas audições:

1) The Second Apple, Nico Catacchio T(h)ree 
2) Tributo a Lucio Battisti, 6 in Jazz 
3) The Endless Mysteries, George Colligan 
4) Giro-vago, Paolo Paliaga e Ares Tavolazzi 
5) Steppin'out, Roberto Olzer Trio 
6) Ivan Paduart Trio Live 
7) Thank You, Mario Nappi feat. Javier Girotto 
8) Inni D'Italia, Paolo Di Sabatino & Renzo Ruggieri 
9) Quasar, Geraldo Henrique Bulhões 
10) Icaros, Dominic J Marshall Trio 
11) Odd Man In, Ettore Carucci 

 Menções honrosas: 
1) DVD Chick Corea & Stefano Bollani Duet - Umbria Jazz 2009 
2) Hope, Giovanni Scasciamacchia Trio with Fabrizio Bosso 
3) Überjam Deux, John Scofield - Para quem gosta de guitarra, um CD extraordinário, mas não é jazz. No máximo, fusion.


By Renato Medeiros Barroso

Relação dos melhores de 2013:

1 - Joe DeFrancesco - Wonderful! Wonderful!
2 - Bob Stenson Trio - Indicium
3 - Marian McPartland with strings - Silent Pool
4 - Andrea Pagani Trio - Le Storie D'Amore
 
Abraço a todos e um bom 2014,
Renato


By Prof. Dr. Carlos Couto

1. FÉ CEGA - Leandro Braga Trio ( CD excepcional-imperdível-fantástico: MARAVILHOSO )
2.Edu Lobo & Metropole Orchestra - Edu Lobo
3.Um Olhar sobre Villa Lobos - Mario Adnet & Orquestra
4.Mata Atlântica - Alberto Rosemblit & Orquestra
5.Marcos Valle & Stacey Kent - M.Valle & S.Kent
6.Entre Elle & Lui - Michel Legrand & Natalie Dessay
7.Saturday Morning - Ahrmad Jamal
8. Caminhos - Bob Cupini Quinteto
9. Let's Dance - US Air Force Big Band
10.Back-Stage Sally - S. Wagner Sexteto

MELHOR DVD: HOMENAGEM A BERT KAEMPFERT
CANTORA DO ANO: ANITA O'DAY ( in memorium)
HOMENAGEM POST MORTEM: OSCAR CASTRO NEVES, MARIAN McPARTLAND, PAUL SMITH


By Márcio Távora

CDS:
BOB SNEIDER & JOE LOCKE (2007) - NOCTURNE FOR AVA – FILM NOIR PROJECT
DAN NIMMER & SAYAKA TSURUTA (2012) [2 CDS] - ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE
EDU LOBO (2011)  –  EDU LOBO & METROPOLE ORKEST  
HENRY JEROME (1959...1961) [2 CDS] – BRAZEN BRASS FOUR COMPLETE ALBUMS
HENRY MANCINI (1962) –  HATARI – COMPLETE ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE
HENRY MANCINI (1963) –  CHARADE – COMPLETE ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE
JOHNNY MERCER (1973-1974) [2 CDS] – MOON RIVER – JOHNNY MERCER SINGS
MARCOS VALLE (2013) – MARCOS VALLE & STACEY KENT AO VIVO 50 ANOS
MARIA MARKESINI (2011) – CINEMAPASSIONATA – A MOTION PICTURE SONGBOOK
MARIO ADNET (2012) – AMAZONIA – NA TRILHA DA FLORESTA
NATALIE DESSAY & MICHEL LEGRAND (2013) – ENTRE ELLE ET LUI
NEW ROMAN TRIO (2008) – BACH JAZZ
SID RAMIN (1963) – NEW THRESHOLDS IN SOUND & THE BIG BAND SOUND
TINA MAY (2010) – TINA MAY SINGS PIAF – CELEBRATING A LEGEND
TSUYOSHI YAMAMOTO TRIO (2013) – GENTLE BLUES 

DVDS:
ANITA O’DAY (1963-1970) – JAZZ ICONS – LIVE IN ’63 & ‘70 
BURT BACHARACH (2008) – B.B. & THE BBC CONCERT ORCHESTRA 
DON FRIEDMAN (2006) – D.F. MEETS CEDAR WALTON & BENNY GOLSON {RMB}
JOE LOCKE & BOBBY HUTCHERSON (2007) – HOMAGE TO MILT JACKSON {RMB}
MICHEL LEGRAND (2010) – M.L. AND FRIENDS – 50 YEARS OF MUSIC & MOVIES 
STEFANO BOLLANI & CHICK COREA (2009) – DUET {RMB}
STEVE KUHN TRIO & JOE LOVANO (2008) – REMEMBERING JOHN COLTRANE {RMB}

OBSERVAÇÕES / CRÉDITOS:
A apresentação está em ordem alfabética, pois todos que aqui constam CDs e DVDs,
me agradaram muito. Os destaques maiores são para os DVDs, principalmente, DON
FRIEDMAN, JOE LOCKE & BOBBY HUTCHERSON, STEFANO BOLLANI & CHICK COREA e
STEVE KUHN TRIO & JOE LOVANO.
O melhor de todos sem a menor dúvida é o do STEFANO BOLLANI & CHICK COREA, sendo assim o DVD do ano de 2013.
Acuso o responsável pelos DVDs selecionados o Sr. RMB {Roberto Medeiros Barroso}.
Na relação de CDs apresentada constam alguns que pela primeiríssima vez foram lançados em formato CD, e que foram muito marcantes na minha estrada musical, que são:
HENRY JEROME & THE BRAZEN BRASS {METAIS EM BRASA} [4 LPs]
SID RAMIN BIG BAND {Co-Arranjador de Leonard Bernstein} [2 LPs]
HENRY MANCINI {HATARI & CHARADE} {Eu já tinha os 2 CDs, mas nesses estão inseridas mais músicas e outros arranjos para as que existiam} {Talvez o HANK não gostasse}


By Augusto Cesar Costa

O MELHOR JAZZ DE 2013:
1. Ahmad Jamal - Saturday Morning
2. Keith Jarrett - Somewhere
3. Eldar Djangirov - Breakthrough
4. Alessio Menconi - Sketches of Miles
5. Maria Baptist - Music for Jazz Orchestra
6. Tomasz Stanko - Wislawa
7. Kenny Wheeler - Six for Six
8. Charles Lloyd & Jason Moran - Hagar's Song
9. Ralph Towner - Travel Guide
10. Andy Bey - The World According to Andy Bey

Menções Honrosas (CDs lançados em 2012):
1. Dino & Franco Piana Septet - Seven
2. Nico Catacchio T(h)ree - The Second Apple
3. Claudio Filippini Trio - Facing North

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Jim Hall 1930 - 2013





By John Fordham at TheGuardian
The jazz guitarist Jim Hall, who has died aged 83, was a modest maestro with immense influence. Hall played an electric instrument often prone to hyperbole with an irresistibly quiet delicacy, and his improvisations were as shapely as fine songs. He was still performing and initiating new projects in his 80s. When he played at the London Jazz festival in November 2012, he won the audience over before he had even played a note by declaring with characteristic understatement: "It's great to be … any place, actually."
On that occasion he performed with a trio: his ingeniously lyrical music sounded just as engaging as it had when his gently weaving lines and coaxing chord-playing with Jimmy Giuffre's trio graced the title sequence of Bert Stern's documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz festival, Jazz on a Summer's Day.
Hall wound up his London set with a vivacious version of his old sparring partner Sonny Rollins's calypso St Thomas, demonstrating his alertness to contemporary technology by sparingly applying a steel-pan effect to the guitar. His gig had probably been one of the quietest shows at the 2012 festival, but – typically – it was one of the most heartwarmingly memorable.
Hall spent half a century collaborating with some of jazz's greatest originals. He toured Europe with Ella Fitzgerald in 1960; played improvised duets with the pianist Bill Evans; imaginatively shadowed the thundering saxophone lines of Rollins in the trio that recorded Rollins's landmark post-sabbatical album The Bridge (1962); worked with the composer and saxophonist Paul Desmond (1959-65); and, in his later years, put his classical training to use in mixed-genre compositions for jazz groups and string quartets, and orchestral works including the guitar concerto Peace Movement.
Born in Buffalo, New York, Hall was raised in Cleveland. After taking up the guitar at the age of 10, he was playing professionally as a teenager. Although influenced by Benny Goodman's pioneering young guitar star Charlie Christian, he listened to saxophonists as much as guitarists, for their rounded voice-like tone and their conception of melody.
Hall studied theory and piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music in the early 1950s (guitars were not on the programme), as well as classical guitar in Los Angeles, and worked with the the drummer Chico Hamilton's quintet – a significant presence in the reserved new "cool jazz" movement – in 1955-56. He made Jazz Guitar, his first album as a leader, in 1957, and worked until 1959 in a trio with the sophisticated reeds player and composer Giuffre – an experience Hall later credited with training him to keep flawless time without drums. He also taught at the forward-thinking Lenox School of Jazz in Massachusetts, and performed with Rollins, Desmond, Evans, Fitzgerald, Lee Konitz and Ben Webster during a busy freelance period in the 1960s.
Hall later moved to New York, where he performed as a sideman, co-led a group with the trumpeter Art Farmer and formed a trio including the pianist Tommy Flanagan. He briefly joined a talented studio band for Merv Griffin's TV show in 1965, began his remarkable run of duo explorations with Evans (1966) and Ron Carter (1972), and showed how punchy, affectingly bluesy and melodically succinct his calm improvisations could be, on the album Jim Hall Live! (1975).
In 1981, Hall recorded with both the swing piano star George Shearing and the classical violinist Itzhak Perlman, and throughout the 1980s and 90s he continued to lead sympathetic bands featuring acclaimed younger partners such as the keyboardists Gil Goldstein and Larry Goldings, the saxophonist Chris Potter and the drummer Bill Stewart. In 1986, he partnered the saxophonist Wayne Shorter and the pianist Michel Petrucciani for gigs at the Montreux Jazz festival and the Village Vanguard in New York. Four years later he hosted a guitar concert at the JVC Jazz festival in New York, at which he performed with John Scofield, Pat Metheny and John Abercrombie.
In 1991, Hall and Metheny played four duo concerts and later co-led a quartet with the saxophonist Joe Lovano. Hall also began to give unaccompanied shows, aided by electronics that allowed him to play contrapuntally, but without ever blurring the motivic logic and discreet pungency of phrasing that always shaped his signature.
For the 1995 album Dialogues, Hall wrote almost all the music, designed to steer intimate conversations with partners including Lovano and the guitarists Bill Frisell and Mike Stern. For Textures, in 1996, he moved closer to classically inflected chamber music. His jazz quartet was augmented by strings on the album Jazzpar Quartet + 4 (1998), which was recorded to celebrate the guitarist's receipt of Denmark's prestigioushis receiving the Danish Jazzpar prize and which included Hall's classical piece Thesis and a version of Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze.
Composition and teaching played significant parts in Hall's later career. He taught at the New School for Social Research, in New York (1990-95), and wrote the instructional book Exploring Jazz Guitar (1991). Transcriptions of his playing have guided aspiring guitarists everywhere.
In his 70s, Hall seemed to get even better as a performer. The live albums Grand Slam: Live at the Regattabar (2000) and Magic Meeting (2004) found him sometimes sounding more animated and carefree than he had in his circumspect youth. In 2004 he received a Jazz Masters award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and though health issues troubled him later in the decade, he continued to compose and perform. In 2013 he began releasing new live recordings through ArtistShare, a platform financed by fans' contributions. In the summer of 2013 Hall returned to the Newport Jazz festival to play with the 25-year-old guitarist Julian Lage, a musician of comparable melodic grace and fertility of ideas.
After the announcement of Hall's death, Rollins declared: "I don't know anybody who didn't love him, including myself. He was the consummate musician, and it was a privilege to work with him."
Hall is survived by his wife, Jane, whom he married in 1965, and by his daughter, Devra, who was also his manager.
• James Stanley Hall, guitarist, born 4 December 1930; died 10 December 2013

Sunday, December 01, 2013

Chico Hamilton 1921 - 2013




By PETER KEEPNEWS at The NewYork times
Published: November 26, 2013
Chico Hamilton, a drummer and bandleader who helped put California on the modern-jazz map in the 1950s and remained active into the 21st century, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 92.
His death was announced by April Thibeault, his publicist.
Never among the flashiest or most muscular of jazz drummers, Mr. Hamilton had a subtle and melodic approach that made him ideally suited for the understated style that came to be known as cool jazz, of which his hometown, Los Angeles, was the epicenter.
He was a charter member of the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s quartet, which helped lay the groundwork for the cool movement. His own quintet, which he formed shortly after leaving the Mulligan group, came to be regarded as the quintessence of cool. With its quiet intensity, its intricate arrangements and its uniquely pastel instrumentation of flute, guitar, cello, bass and drums — the flutist, Buddy Collette, also played alto saxophone — theChico Hamilton Quintet became one of the most popular groups in jazz. (The cellist in that group, Fred Katz, died in September.)
The group was a mainstay of the nightclub and jazz festival circuit and even appeared in movies. It was prominently featured in the 1957 film “Sweet Smell of Success,” with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. (One character in that movie, a guitarist played by Martin Milner, was a member of the Hamilton group on screen, miming to the playing of the quintet’s real guitarist, John Pisano.) And it was seen in “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” Bert Stern’s acclaimed documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.
Cool jazz had fallen out of favor by the mid-1960s, but by then Mr. Hamilton had already altered the sound and style of his quintet, replacing the cellist with a trombonist and adopting a bluesier, more aggressive approach.
In 1966, after more personnel changes and more shifts in audience tastes, Mr. Hamilton, no longer on top of the jazz world but increasingly interested in composing — he wrote the music for Roman Polanski’s 1965 film, “Repulsion” — disbanded the quintet and formed a company that provided music for television shows and commercials.
But he continued to perform and record occasionally, and by the mid-1970s he was back on the road as a bandleader full time. He was never again as big a star as he had been in the 1950s, but he remained active, and his music became increasingly difficult to categorize, incorporating elements of free jazz, jazz-rock fusion and other styles.
He was born Foreststorn Hamilton in Los Angeles on Sept. 21, 1921. His father, Jesse, worked at the University Club of Southern California, and his mother, Pearl Lee Gonzales Cooley Hamilton, was a school dietitian.
Asked by Marc Myers of the website JazzWax how he got the name Chico, he said he wasn’t sure but thought he acquired it as a teenager because “I was always a small dude.”
While still in high school he immersed himself in the local jazz scene, and by 1940 he was touring with Lionel Hampton’s big band. After serving in the Army during World War II, he worked briefly with the bands of Jimmy Mundy, Charlie Barnet and Count Basie before becoming the house drummer at the Los Angeles nightclub Billy Berg’s in 1946.
From 1948 to 1955 he toured Europe in the summers as a member of Lena Horne’s backup band, while playing the rest of the year in Los Angeles. His softly propulsive playing was an essential element in the popularity of Mulligan’s 1952 quartet, which also included Chet Baker on trumpet but, unusually, did not have a pianist. The group helped set the template for what came to be known as West Coast jazz, smoother and more cerebral than its East Coast counterpart.
The high profile he achieved with Mulligan emboldened him to try his luck as a bandleader, something fairly unusual for a drummer in the 1950s. His success was almost instantaneous.
He went on to record prolifically for a variety of labels, including Pacific Jazz, Impulse, Columbia and Soul Note. Among the honors he received were a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award in 2004 and a Kennedy Center Living Jazz Legend Award in 2007.
Although slowed by age, Mr. Hamilton continued to perform and record beyond his 90th birthday. He released an album, “Revelation,” in 2011 on the Joyous Shout label, and had recently completed another one, “Inquiring Minds,” scheduled for release in 2014. Until late last year he was appearing at the Manhattan nightclub Drom with Euphoria, the group he had led since 1989.
Mr. Hamilton is survived by a brother, Don; a daughter, Denise Hamilton; a granddaughter; and two great-granddaughters. His brother the actor Bernie Hamilton, and his wife, Helen Hamilton, both died in 2008.
Mr. Hamilton was highly regarded not just for his drumming, but also as a talent scout. Musicians who passed through his group before achieving stardom on their own include the bassist Ron Carter, the saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Charles Lloyd and the guitarists Jim Hall, Gabor Szabo and Larry Coryell. In a 1992 interview with National Public Radio, the saxophonist Eric Person, a longtime sideman, praised Mr. Hamilton for teaching “how to work on the bandstand, how you dress onstage, how you carry yourself in public.”
Mr. Hamilton taught those lessons as a bandleader and, for more than two decades, as a faculty member at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York. Teaching young musicians, he told The Providence Journal in Rhode Island in 2006, was “not difficult if they realize how fortunate they are.”
“But,” he added, “if they’re on an ego trip, that’s their problem.”
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.