Toshiko Mariano Quartet

Toshiko Mariano Quartet.

Little "T"

One of the most beautiful pieces of music you'll ever hear. Picked this up in California for peanuts.

Heaven.

For all the romanticism of the theme, the playing is virile and often shoutingly joyful. Little T was written by Charlie some six weeks before this recording and was dedicated to his wife. As in serveral pieces by Miles Davis and Bill Evans, the piece is developed modally, thereby allowing for freer melodic development in the long improvised passages. Actually, it can be called polymodal since several modes can be played on the scale that is it's core. Toshiko, the scholar of the two, terms that scale an E Mixolydian harmonized as an A Dorian scale. Charlie simply refers to it as a G scale (the Mixolydian mode consists of the white noteson the piano from G to G) It begins with a yearning theme, played rubato, first by Charlie who is soon joined bowed bass and is followed by Toshiko. The jazz choruses then begin in tempo. The tune goes out in reverse. After the melody is restated, Toshiko plays a rubato epilogue and the tune ends with Mariano and Cherico. Throughout , as in the album as a whole, the quartet plays with a flowing organic wholeness of feeling and time out of which come Mariano's penetrating solos with their pervasive "cry" of jazz and Toshiko's burningly intense, complementary improvisations.