Search - McCoy Tyner :: Illuminations

Excellent Music - Not So Good Recording

Bromo | 08/16/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Let me be clear: McCoy Tyner is an excellent musician, and I just love his work. This is a wonderful album musically, but the sound quality leaves something to be desired. 4/5 for the music, but 2/5 for the recording quality!



I got hooked on McCoy Tyner on his _Land of Giants_ CD - which is an amazing CD, great music and a truly spectacular recording and transfer to disc. Illuminations is even better for a music point of view - but in my stereo system at home - instead of being blown away, I was dissappointed.



The recording seems to have lost some of the brilliance of the drums (they sounded flat as if something was wrong with the drums or the miking of the drums) and the overall presence of the music was much less than it could have been (it sounded as if someone had tossed a veil over my speakers!) - it was billed as being a "direct from DSD transfer" but boy did that not seem to help at all! It got a little bit better on the following tracks, but the drums never seemed to get fixed which ruined the whole album for me. The average recording level seemed really low as well - making me crank up the volume to get the same level of loudness from most other albums making me think that someone had not adjusted the level and done their job in crafting the music. As you could see, I had spent a lot of my time wondering what went wrong rather than getting lost in the music as I had done upon pressing "play" in his Land of Giants disc. I consider something gone horribly wrong with the technical mastering/creation of this disc!



Since my home stereo is a bit revealing, I though I would give it a second chance and I listened to it in my car - and it sounded a bit better though the drums sounded really flat either way. For my money, I hoped that the sound engineers had done a better job in mastering, but CD recording quality is very uneven even today, even in Jazz titles. [Note that the sound is better than the Real Player samples on Amazon, though not a huge amount better!]



If you want stuff from this artist - check out Land of Giants which is a great performance and recording - I am not sure what went wrong in the transfer to disc, but I would not have bought this album in hindsight.



In summary: Great Artist, Great Music, Medoicre Sound Quality."

Good music with a medium quality sound

Alger Stephane | france | 09/14/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"hi, first of all i am a true fan . I own both telarc's sacd :Mc coy tyner with stanley clarcke and al foster and land of gaints .I bought "illuminations" last week,and i immediatly enjoyed it.I'm just dissapointed about the general mix,the drumset sound seems flat and the peak level is lower than others telarc's sacd.I've got a good hi-fi system and this is the first time that i'm dissapointed with the quality sound of a telarc sacd.Anyway, if you like tyner's music and you are not an audiophile, you can buy this one too."

A democracy of playing

Case Quarter | CT USA | 11/06/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"first of all, mccoy tyner has history scanning four decades. and, historically, this is not his best recording. try listening to the real mccoy and tyner on david henderson's inner urge.

the music here is all too contemporary, which isn't all bad when you consider the contemporary players, nash, blanchard, mcbride, tyner has chosen. but that's just it, he's chosen them almost as a showcase, and these established performers hardly need showcasing. the cd belongs to them, with tyner and bartz sitting in as elder statesmen of jazz.

gary bartz is a reflective saxophonist given to flights of magic when inspired by his personal muse and here that magic is missing.

a nice album, some latin tinged numbers and melodic pieces. and everyone under fifty gets plenty of time, particularly terance blanchard under whose rubic this cd could easily had been released."