Search - Art Pepper :: Art Pepper: Unreleased Art Vol. 2 the Last Concert

On May 30, 1982, Art Pepper performed in the last concert of his last tour. This is the concert. He was 56 and was standing, victorious, at the end of the battle: his life. His ups and downs were legendary, because his talent was so remarkable and his drugged-out desperation and incarcerations so notorious. But, at the last minute, as in his childhood play, he triumphed. He had turned all of his fraught energy, at last, to music, recording, by the end, hundreds of albums, composing hundreds of tunes, all exceptional, because it wasn't in his nature to tolerate anything less. Ever. He was at the top of his form, here, just a few weeks before a cerebral hemorrhage took his life. And he played, here, with his characteristic desperate energy. He said it himself. "At my age, things happen. I know that every song might be my last." He wanted each performance to be indelible. This one is. People who were there still talk about how sublime it was.