Search - Various Artists :: Round Midnight

Soundtrack buffs may know that this score to director Bertrand Tavernier's alluring jazz period piece inexplicably won the 1986 Oscar for best soundtrack instead of Morricone and his rich, enduring music for The Mission. That injustice aside, it remains a worthy collage of vintage jazz standards, new material, and contemporary performers, as filtered through the spirit of the story's main character (an amalgam of Bud Powell and Lester Young) and the '50s Paris jazz scene. It's also a tribute to Round Midnight musical director Herbie Hancock, with his crucial understanding that jazz--and especially bebop--can never stand on tradition, lest it lose its very reason for being. Thus he lets then-newcomer Bobby McFerrin loose on Monk's moody title track, gives vet Chet Baker's horn and voice a warm turn in the spotlight on "Fair Weather," and allows Lonette McKee and star Dexter Gordon to infuse Gershwin's "How Long Has This Been Going On" with some languorous, subtly sexual heat. Other highlights include a romp through Monk's "Rhythm-a-Ning," Hancock's tense, modernist "Berangere's Nightmare," and the spare, enchanting duet with Bobby Hutcherson, "Minuit aux Champs-Elysees." Remarkably, most of the film's music was recorded live on the set, giving it a compelling warmth and immediacy that's increasingly rare. This new edition features expanded liner notes as well as a bonus cut of the title track performed by Dexter Gordon's quintet live at the Village Vanguard in 1967. --Jerry McCulley